Scarecrow In Winter
by Sterenyk Strey
Summary: 'What they'd done to him, he, McKay and Teyla, was tantamount to torture and betrayal. Then along came Kavanagh.' Will John Sheppard survive long enough to forgive? And remember? Shep whump/team angst. XD
1. Chapter 1

A/N - yoo hoo, peeps! Long time, no post! This is a multi-chapter swan song for my Shep whump writer pals and betas on fan fic and original fics,** JoaniexJony, shepsgirl72** and **Elanthra**. Thanks, shepsgirl, for being my beta on this one! This is also for** sherry57**, an avid reader and reviewer. Rumor has it she luffs herself a puddle jumper crash...*winks* I will be posting every other Sat to give myself time to twiddle, fiddle and faddle with the later chapters. Two or three of the earlier chapters might seem familiar to some of you in that they were my entries on a Shep whump round robin some years back on a now defunct site. I edited them some more, and incorporated them into this fic. Some serious Shep whump ahoy, but hey. It's also a birthday prezzie for Joanie. Happy birthday, poppet! Chapter One coming up on your birthday! Meanwhile, here's the prologue to whet some Shep whumpy appetites. Enjoy! XD

...

Offry Bindycolt collected hisself lots and lots of pretty seashells for them rich, land-locked offworld tourists what infested the beaches and markets of Blerry Bluff every summer, year in, year out, come rain or shine. Offry made sure he snagged hisself shells all through the other seasons, leaving hardly none for the tourists to pick for theirselves. Didn't even matter if the shells had holes or chips in 'em. Shells was shells, and the ones with holes in 'em could be strung on peelygut into necklaces and bracelets and other junk. Thems he sold to crafters as he didn't have the eyesight or the patience to string 'em hisself. Sometimes he even found jewelry and coinage. Tasty! Thems wasn't as plentiful as the shells, but thems was well worth a drink or five down the pub. He even managed to catch crabs with his bare toes as he waded in rock pools, and thems was worth some ointment for his poor, nipped feets, and a decent hot meal down the pub, sometimes even a blerrymeat pie. Kept him alive it did. The last thing he expected to catch was a man. At least not a whole one.

He crouched beside the man. Bugger was half buried in the sand. Looked chewed up and spit out, he did. Either the crabs had got to him or the nibblefish had. He didn't know which, neither did he care. Offry scratched his head, and picked at a sunburn scab on his bald pate while he thought this through, then picked at his ragged, fungusy toenails. What could he get for this one dead or alive? He'd always fancied hisself as a bounty hunter for runaway slaves.

Offry had never had such a windfall before. He could barely think straight. One thing was certain – he had to inform the sheriff or else. Offry didn't care for his home from home, the jail, much. Food was crap. Bread and water. Sometimes seawater and maggoty meat or broth with hair and flies floating in it if they was feeling extra mean.

Offry poked him in his presenting shoulder. Yep, chewed up and spit out all right. Offry wiped offending blood and sand off his pointy finger and onto his breeches since the tide was out.

He didn't care for dead'uns. Couldn't get nothing much for dead'uns. Dead'uns was fit for nothing but false teeth, scalpwigs, leather, soap, and respa bait. And who hunted respa these days? Had to buy the buggers now though the proper channels. Thems as had licenses, that is. Bloody conservationists from Skojo City. Just because that lot on the big island had lost the skill of hunting shouldn't'a ever'a meant outer islanders couldn't snag a few for theirselves. That lot just got their meat all ground up, spit in, chilled, packaged, labeled and priced, and their fur coats right off a rack, they did. All the outer islanders was allowed to hunt was a handful of blerries, and they was hardly large enough to warrant the effort of skinning 'em, they wasn't. Nasty, bitey, hoppity little rodents. Not that that stopped the poachers. Like hisself. Offry chuckled.

The man stirred and groaned, and Offry felt a tingly flood of excitement rush right through his whole self from his bald pate to his toes. He was a live'un! Praise the Ancestors! Offry couldn't believe his luck. He danced a quick jig around him, then plucked a bright red claim flag for bulk items from his pouch, stuck it into the sand an arm's length from the now squirming man, and dashed off to fetch the sheriff, not looking back to check how alert his catch was. Alive would do. Bugger could drop dead after he got hisself paid in full.

As he pelted along the beach as fast as his scrawny legs could manage, up the stone steps and across the way and into town, he thought about how he could look forward to a month's stay in an actual room with a bed as well as a hot meal sometimes even twice a day, maybe even a peelyfowl stew if he was lucky. Offry drooled. The man, whoever he was, could look forward to a life of servitude. He was most likely a runaway since he was badly marked, though most of his scars looked recent. He got hisself a good look at his back when the deputies dug him out of the sand. Nasty! Definitely a bad'un to warrant that kind of treatment.

They tied the bugger's wrists together using a tow rope, and dragged him off to the jailhouse where he belonged, one leg splinted against the other. What was the island coming to in any case when runaway slaves washed up on law-abiding folks's beaches? Yep, he was a runaway slave all right. Had to be. He'd never seen hair that dark or that spiky hereabouts. Or features that pointy. Or maybe he was some exotic crown prince from the other side of the world, what'd fallen foul of a wicked, ambitious second son like in story books? The heir and the spare? Like their very own Prince Kelzeney and Prince Zrebney? Yeah, right. Nothing exciting like that happened on Skojo, at least not in Blerry Bluff. Respa Reef, maybe, but not in Blerry.

Later that afternoon down the pub, Offry thought about slaves and their lot and royalty and their lot long and hard for all of the time it took to slurp the mead he'd been nursing, then shrugged it all off. There was more crabs to be caught after all. He'd spied a big'un sidling around his favorite crabbing rock before he got hisself all turned around and skew. It might even be Ol' Sly. He'd been after that bugger for years, but so far had only snapped off a leg or three. He'd cook 'im up in dribs and drabs, he would.

The sheriff had said with a wink and a grin that Offry could most likely buy hisself a beach shack with his takings, get to stay right there on the beach just above high tide instead of under a bench or a shop front awning, and look out for more handy runaways for him. Offry even had quite the posh shack in mind, made of solid wood. Ol' Ma Trinky had just snuffed it, and her one and only nephew, Leb, the sole heir to her estate, had been itching to sell her house and other assets for years, and couldn't wait for the old bag to drop dead, or so he often said down the pub after a jug or seven. She had antiques, he said. Paintings and jools and junk like that.

Leb didn't need no beach shack no more when he could buy hisself a nice floating pub, he said. Offry would pay his respects at the wake tomorrow, and the subject of the beach shack would come up. Yep, things was definitely looking up, they was. He might even buy himself a missus. Or at least rent one for a week.

Truth be told, Offry didn't really think the man was a runaway, but he would never let the sheriff know what he thought less he got hisself slapped in jail again for letting his mouth run away with him. Not that he was even halfway drunk yet. Offry kept a straight face, hefted his swag bag, staggered out of the pub, nodded knowingly to a drunken Leb who was toasting his own good fortune along with all his new friends, and waggled his eyebrows at the nearest tittering pub wench, hoping she was also a halfway decent cook as well as a good lay. He jiggled his swag bag, reveling in the chinking sound of coinage, which sounded like seashells being churned and ground in the waves. Aaahhh. Music to his ears.

Offy promptly forgot about the poor bugger what'd just brung him the best windfall he'd ever had or was ever likely to have in all his born days. A particularly tasty redheaded wench came into his thoughts in his stead. Skankifah. He skipped all the way to the beach shack to stick his bright red claim flag in the sand, struggling not to fondle hisself in public.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N - posting early, just to give you all an actual chapter rather than merely a prologue, though I won't be posting again until Joanie's *cough* 21st. Hope you like!

...

Ronon howled like a mortally wounded borrma. He pummeled his chest, then punched the thick, dark window in Sheppard's dank, rank shit-hole of a cell, his 'home' of some six months out of the two years he'd been missing. Yeah, he'd been gone that long. Hard to believe.

The window was non-reflective and - apparently retractable. So said some combat engineer on the rescue team. That Harris maybe. Not the Duff Beer/Oprah Ale Wraith hybrid Harris, but the real one. Harris drank something called Newcastle Brown, or so he'd heard since. A real ale, apparently, better known as Newky Brown, though what was more or less real about it compared to this Oprah dude's brew he might never know. If Sheppard was okay with that, then Ronon was. He wondered if this Oprah was a fine warrior. A hero. Ronon hoped to meet him someday. Maybe spar. In the meantime, this was the end of Operation 'Rescue Sheppard'. Yeah, right. That was gonna take some doing even though they'd found him. Found what was left of his body but nothing much of his mind. Ronon sniffed. And punched a window.

Ronon watched in surly fascination as the oddly captivating, symmetrical snowflake shape he had just created with his right fist against that window cracked then slowly, oohhh sooo slllowwwlllyyy, radiated outwards in gravity-defying rivulets towards other prissy snowflakes equally frozen in time and space.

Sheppard must've punched that damn window over and over and over again. It had cracked, but had never broken. Until now. The super-tough glass had clearly been weakened over time. As the latest crack skated up and around, zigzagging towards the frame, the window finally shattered, and Sheppard let out a hoarse scream.

Ronon stood there, his flesh crawling, his nerves squirming, his bones jangling, staring open-mouthed into a slowly forming, light-sucking void ready and willing to devour all their souls before the day was done. He watched shakily as shards of glass clattered to the cold stone floor - revealing a stark, hidden observation room. With a door. An actual exit.

Your way out, Sheppard! Your way home...

Asshole.

_Just one more punch, Sheppard. That's all it would have taken. Then you could have taken those bastards out. Maybe before things got this bad. Gah!_

Ronon glared, seething, into the grim, toothy maw of the twilit room, felt himself being drawn to the other side like he was a strip of that Terran dental floss. He could feel his heart pounding, his chest heaving. He clenched his fists, sucked in a breath, and hurdled with the surly ease of a seasoned athlete over the low sill, deftly avoiding the embedded, jagged shards, landing neatly four-square. He drew himself to full height, and looked about him in challenge.

The room was barely thirty feet square, same as the cell. Inside, however, were twelve staggered bleachers either side of some stone steps. Ronon placed a firm hand on a metal railing.

Shit!

Cold!

Frozen to the touch.

His fingers stuck to the metal momentarily.

He ripped his fingers away, blowing on them even as they tingled, and watched his breath form tiny puffs of dark gray mist in the chill air, like faint clouds barely visible in the last weak light of a setting sun. Ronon alternated between puffing and panting in an attempt to calm himself down, then slapped his own face twice, whereupon he let out his mightiest Satedan battle cry to date, ignoring another scream from Sheppard and the stage whispers of protest from the other side of the maw.

_Just try me!_

The hidden room wasn't much warmer than the cell, though it possessed a skylight, allowing timid sunbeams entry. That took the edge off the chill. He scuffed along the floor, churning up long-settled dust. He left tracks, but for once he didn't give a splick's ass. All-comers would die!

Dust motes joined the puffs of now golden mist in a chaotic, mesmerizing dance as they both ascended the sunbeams. Yep, this place had been abandoned weeks ago. How the fuck was John Sheppard still alive? Gah!

Ronon glanced back into the cold, dark, cell at the pale, thin, naked and shivering body on the floor, and shivered in empathy, rubbing his hands up and down his bare arms, even up into his now sweaty armpits. There was barely any glass to shatter bar some 'teeth' to kick out; Ronon smashed his fist into the wall instead.

Ronon heard a rustle to his left. Teyla. She was glaring at him and muttering at him from the other side of the wall, her tiny hands resting like stalled toothpicks between the glass teeth of the maw. Ronon slapped on his best contrite expression. This was Teyla after all, and as usual, she scared him shitless, though he'd never ever let on. It was also an unwritten rule amongst even the most hardened of marines that there was no messing with her. Or so he overheard sometimes in the mess hall, sometimes in the gun room. Some even saluted her stiffly, though she merely nodded back in that serene manner of hers, and strode purposefully on her way, knocking men aside as if by an invisible force.

Teyla was a goddess.

"Ronon! You are not helping!" she hissed, her arm muscles bunching and sinews cording in sync with her words. "We need you to help calm him, make him aware of our presence. Please!"

"Whatever." Ronon shuffled on the spot. It was hard to even glance into the cell, though he knew he was being selfish.

"I understand how you feel, but the time to become angry is already in the past. That, or it yet lies ahead. John needs us. Now! He needs _you!"_

She growled those last three words. Like a borrma in heat or rut.

_He needs you..._

_He needs... us!_

"He doesn't even get that I'm here, that any of us is here," he growled, wondering in an instant why he hadn't said 'we're'. He clenched his fists, and banged them against his thighs, then despite himself, he opened his fists, and waved them sideways as if in supplication, shaking them at her many times over. She chose to ignore him. He glared after her.

Ronon witnessed wide-eyed as Teyla clambered in slo-mo over the sill like Samara through the TV in that movie, The Ring, her long, sweat-damp hair clinging to her face. That was one movie Ronon never wished to see again. It was bad enough watching Wraith coming to suck out your very soul, invoking a wizened, sardonic death mask, a mien of sheer terror. Why the fuck did the Terrans willingly visit that kind of horror? Maybe they needed an unhealthy dose of Wraith to wrench their tawdry form of entertainment back to escapism.

"The colonel, I fear, is having difficulty understanding that we are truly here for him. He – smiles, almost fondly, then gazes - elsewhere. Beyond. Then, he bats our hands away. He – panics! Why?! It is us! His team! We are here for him!" Teyla gruffed out those last five words.

As if her tone could ever lend those words credence.

"Like we were 'there' for him before we lost him? Remember what we did to him! What we did was worse than this! Way worse! We had a choice!"

"A poor one!"

"I. Know." And he could barely keep the emotion out of his voice, he who was once a warrior with honor.

Ronon stiffened, and hooked up a bunch of his dreads that'd fallen over his face with a long, stretchy cord Amelia called a scrunchie. He'd kept one of hers about his wrist, though it dug in, and some of her hair was still caught in it. Sheppard had raised one eyebrow at that when they had been chilling in Ronon's room one day nursing beers and flicking through sports magazines. He'd raised an eyebrow at him, calling him a sly dog. As usual, Ronon had to infer the meaning, and Sheppard calling the magazines dog-eared kind of helped him work out what a dog was. Sheppard then slammed a fist into his shoulder, grinning that grin of his. That was when Ronon scooped him up and tucked him under his arm, and threatened to haul him like that all the way to the gateroom. That was when a chuckling Sheppard promised him a month's supply of honeybuns to save himself some embarrassment. As they neared the door, a helpless, contrite Sheppard threw in a year's supply of White Castle sliders that Ronon knew he could never come up with, whereupon Ronon dropped him, and towered over him as he gathered himself. Scooping him up, tossing him around and dropping him never got old, just like stunning him. Ronon grinned.

Teyla sighed loudly and pointedly, jerking him back to the here and now, and ran her fingers through her hair, then caught a lock, twirled it, and chewed on the end, her fist shaking. So not Teyla. She was – what would Sheppard have said? – antsy. She rounded on him, her sharp, predatory eyes focused on him, her prey. Ronon dropped the grin.

"Still, we must continue to soothe him, and not agitate him any further. Doctor Beckett is having much difficulty inserting an IV, as he fights back. Quite vigorously for a dy- ... very sick man. Ronon, do come back and say something, for pity's sake. To him. Please! Now it is you who is the missing piece of the puzzle, of which there are only four. The four of us."

_The four of us?!_ _It became three against one! How can you have forgotten what we did to him? _Ronon stared at her, incredulous.

"It was necessary," she said coldly, as if reading his mind. "You must remember! Believe!"

"I – I can't." He scrubbed his face, sniffed, and turned away from her, unwilling to look her in the eye direct. Teyla grabbed his arm, and spun him around, grabbing him by his other arm. She shook him. Her eyes sparkled with moisture. Ronon blinked away his own unshed tears.

"Whyever not? He is your friend. Your... good buddy! Is he not?!"

"You wouldn't understand."

"We did what we had to do. The boy... "

"The boy? No."

It wasn't about the boy.

"Try me," she spat, tightening her vicious grip on both his biceps, her lips viciously thin. "Although you cite that you are a blood brother to him, you often demonstrate that you mean him some harm, force upon him a certain endurance almost as if you enjoy it. I have watched you, Ronon Dex. You yet tax him as a brother, even though he is already taxed in that regard."

"Might tell you someday."

"Very well, then." Teyla yanked him down by his vest, and stared him in the eye, a single eyebrow raised in threat, her tiny hand marginally less shaky. "Let this be about you then and not John Sheppard," she growled, her words carrying weight. "What was I thinking?! What was I expecting?" She added, then glowered. "Of. You!"

"Teyla! I - " _had a good friend once, who…_

"Later." Teyla kept that single eyebrow raised, informing Ronon she brooked no argument. Then she flung him aside as if he were merely a husk after a feeding. Some ninety percent lighter than he actually was. He felt his ego rent asunder, and cast beyond the Ancients' stronghold of Atlantis and into the twelve unforgiving winds.

Teyla. He often wondered about the Wraith in her. It clearly gave her extra strength, both mentally and physically. He looked forward to teaching Torren to spar some day. He'd start the little boy off with daily lessons as a gift for his first birthday. A lifetime gift. If Teyla would allow him. Torren would be one tough kid. He was, after all, a little bit of whatever it took to get by in this galaxy. Even a little bit Wraith. He'd learned to deal with that.

Ronon adjusted his violated tunic with several sharp tugs front and back and sideways as he watched Teyla vault back over the window sill. Back to Sheppard. Not to Trinnon. This wasn't Trinnon, he had to keep telling himself that, though he'd been right there at that ill rescue, too. He often thought Trin and Sheppard might have been related. Similar in looks, they had both been held captive. In hindsight – both for their genes, both subjected to the same prolonged tor- treatment, but Sheppard was made of sterner stuff. Sheppard would pull through. He always did. Since Ronon had known him, he was just like that. Tough. Deceptively so.

Ronon was glad Teyla had turned her back on him, and hadn't merely done some kind of freaky rewind, facing him, her hair in rats' tails hanging all over her face, re-entering Sheppard's cell backwards. A la Samara. A la Wraith queen. Yep, he would hate that movie to his dying day, and forever resent the Terrans' macabre love of it.

For want of a better course of action, Ronon plunked his rapidly chilling body into some comfortable, padded, ergonomic armchair halfway up the aisle between the bleachers. Ergonomic. One of those silly Terran words he'd grown accustomed to hearing over the years. Hearing, but never using.

Ronon preferred slang to general Terran-speak. It... hid much. He doubted anyone but Sheppard knew how much he grasped intellectually, and he preferred to keep it that way. They could all underestimate his mental prowess until the Wraith turned fucking vegetarian.

He scanned in front of him. A standard console. He studied the primitive, humanoid emblem on the console. It wasn't Wraith. He'd seen that emblem before, or something like it somewhere right here in the Pegasus galaxy. But where? No matter. Behind him, those bleachers – seating for thirty or so - how many sick voyeurs had there been? Watching Sheppard's struggles to stay sane?

He slammed his fist on a fat red button, and of course what was left of the remote control mirror window creaked and screeched as it tracked right and sideways, ramming itself into a broken slot in the wall time and time and time again, its entry denied by shards of glass and other detritus.

Ronon pulled out his stunner, spun it, then shot the red button to smithereens, wondering if Smithereens was a place like the Terran Hell or the Satedan Sheravon. If so, then this place was it.

Below him he spied crumpled pieces of scribbled-on paper, wrappers – even mouse droppings. He checked the armchair for telltale rodent holes indicated a mouse or rat nest or three. Yep. Holes with stuffing pulled out. Above him he spied endless cobwebs and a single, bare lightbulb, probably bust. He flipped a switch. It sputtered, made a chinking sound, then died out. Yeah, bust.

There was a gaping hole in the far wall, leading to a courtyard, which in turn led to yet another gaping hole in some barb wire fence, which equally in turn led into some regular forest. Familiar territory. Which led to a gate. Home. These bastards had abandoned his 'good buddy' - thanks for the reminder, Teyla! - and left him to rot.

Sheppard might even have been stuck in this hellhole or smithereenhole or sheravonhole for the two whole years since his abduction from Atlantis by that little monla-turd, never knowing his exit lay within reach. To heat, light. Freedom. Company. Friendship. Fellowship. Care. Love. All beyond that window with a food slot beneath it.

There had been no magic red button for Sheppard. No fix-it.

Ronon thought of how Trin must've suffered the same long-term abuse.

Trin didn't make it.

Sheppard might.

Sheppard would.

Sheppard was like that.

Ronon decided to 'suck it up' and 'buck up.' Staying positive would have to wait in line. He had lost Trin in an instant. He had lost Melena, also in an instant. He had lost his family, his clan, his entire people bar a handful of miserable turncoats, to his shame. He couldn't afford to lose Sheppard, too. Sheppard was his brother now. The Atlantians were his people now. His home was New Lantia. It had to be.

He would always be Satedan, but he now held this second, compelling allegiance, and it wasn't quite as tenuous as he had first believed. He'd accepted their well-meaning if not naive help, a little food – no, a fuckload of food! – a little tending, a little patching up – and had found a home despite himself.

Still, even this new-found allegiance couldn't make him accept the fact that Sheppard might've been compromised, that he might've ratted out the entire galaxy just to save his own hide. Two years had passed since they'd lost him after all. What could Sheppard have slipped them in that time? Who wouldn't spill something, given what he had clearly endured? Especially if he had believed himself betrayed by his own.

No!

Not Sheppard!

"No!"

What they'd done to him, he, McKay and Teyla, was tantamount to torture and betrayal. Then along came Kavanagh. At least that little monla-turd had finally been shipped back to Earth to face trial for his part in Sheppard's demise. What was left of him, that is. Ronon made sure of beating the frep out of him even though he'd faked passing out again. Ronon held him aloft by his shirt front, then pummeled him until his nose broke and he blubbed like a baby. What they themselves had done to their team leader had been neatly packaged in a report. Sanitized.

Words, they were. Mere symbols. They meant nothing.

Betrayal was betrayal, however much you 'sugar-coat' it, Kolya be damned. Sugar-coat? Coat it in that Terran concrete ten-feet thick, Sheppard's innocent blood would have bled through just the same.

He eyed up one gray wall. Its surface bubbled before him in his mind's eye. Those bubbles popped, leaving behind pock marks, which began to ooze then pour a dark, viscous liquid. Blood. Sheppard's. Ronon looked away.

Ronon hated how his mind worked sometimes, which is why he mostly shut it off, offering the occasional pragmatic response under the guise of a mindless grunt. He knew he would never hold the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything, or even conceive it, though McKay might every once in a while, which was one reason Ronon stuck around. It was cool to know stuff, or even rub shoulders with people who knew stuff about stuff. That and his allegiance to Sheppard and the good fight against the Wraith. Sheppard was the toughest man he had ever known in any fight, be it against Wraith, human or the sorry workings of the human mind. He hoped Sheppard's high threshold for pain included mental pain.

Ronon braced himself against the cold console, and instructed his own mind to close down, and be grateful for it. It didn't work. He could never take orders well these days, and now not even from himself.

Ronon reluctantly stepped back over the sill back into the cell proper. With his eyes adjusted to the dim, yellow-green glow cast by Lorne's scattering of glo-sticks, he could now tell that the cell was most likely some solid concrete cube. Seamless. Well, apart from the gaping hole Harris and the other combat engineers had just made. Sheppard had been sealed in tight. But - how long ago?

The only other exits were a slot below the window, a small latrine, and a drainage hole in the floor. He strode over to Teyla, and made a gesture indicating flicking on an Athosian firestarter. She duly rummaged in a tac vest pocket, and tossed it up to him with a filthy glare. He nodded curtly by way of a thank you, then strode around the cell, finding himself hovering over the drain. It was capped by a corroded metal grate. Why he decided to look in, he had no idea. He squatted. Piss fumes wafted out, activated, no doubt, by the sparse heat of the Athosian firestarter. He waved the firestarter backwards and forwards across the grate. It stunk. He swiped a forefinger across the grate, brought his hand up to his nose, and rubbed his forefinger against his thumb. He sniffed. Blood.

Looking up, he spied a heavy duty hook. Shit. He turned back to where Sheppard lay in the far-most corner, flanked by medical personnel. Carson and a bunch of field medics were buzzing around Sheppard like flies drawn to a rotting corpse. He could just about make out Sheppard's form in their midst. He was glow-in-the-dark pale. Even McKay looked tan next to him now that shafts of sunlight could finally enter the cell. These fucking bastards had denied Sheppard just about everything in varying degrees. They had most likely never let him see daylight in the whole time they'd held him captive.

Why?! Flashes of recall, how this nightmare began, assailed his mind, and in lieu of smacking a wall or a new recruit, Ronon allowed himself to tear up.

Ronon watched through blurred vision as the medics did their thing all over Sheppard from head to toe. He knew some of the basics, like IV lines and other poky-proddy stuff. What made more sense to him was the talking. McKay had that down pat so he left him to it. Back on Sateda, times were when they'd run out of bandages. There was nothing to staunch blood or ward off infection beyond a strip of fabric torn from a shirt, some spittle even and maybe a wad of moss. Talking to the wounded, reassuring them, grounding them, was often a matter of life and death.

Ronon had talked his head off at Trin to no avail. Trin had later quit on him. Ronon had gone quiet after that. He had been called sullen or taciturn ever since. These days, his utterances were inversely proportional to McKay's prattling. Hey, whatever worked. His silence had never bothered Sheppard, and that was good enough for him. Yet times were his own silence made him think too much. Which is why he either sparred, ran, killed Wraith, stunned Sheppard, or stuffed his face in the mess hall. He didn't have to think much then. Or cry.

Ronon sniffed, and swiped his fist across his eyes. Trin. He and Trin had played together from day one. They'd gone through school together, graduated together, been rookies together. They had even double dated. Ronon had played the field, whereas Trin had been about to take a wife, Jalena, a feisty, freckle-faced redhead, more than a match for him. Trin and Jalena had joked about their chances of their offspring ever seeing the sun.

Trin had shared with Ronon over a beer how he truly adored Jalena's rampant freckles, which went across her nose and over her back and shoulders, and along her forearms and lower legs including a cute sprinkling on her fingers and toes, and declared he'd take his chances, given she had brown eyes, all the better against harsh sunlight. She in turn had told him many a time how she loved his darkness, and had decided that, despite his light sensitive, pale green eyes, his skin tone was an advantage.

They both wished for tan children with dark eyes. A girl and a boy. A pigeon pair. Not necessarily for beauty's sake, though that was a given any which way since any combination was beautiful, but for practicality against the harsh Satedan summers. They had even gotten as far as discussing names. Trin had once whispered to him that he wanted seven kids, all sons bar one daughter; Jalena only two, preferably a girl for her and a boy for him. Seemed they finally settled on having just the two, since Trin ran out of boy names after wanting to call his firstborn son Nyre after his adoptive father. At their wedding speech, whereupon Trin had spilled about the tentative name of his prospective firstborn son, Nyre had dabbed his eyes with a handy napkin even as he grinned broadly like his face might split in two.

Jalena. It was almost as hard to think about her as it was Melena.

Jalena was as tough as the ancient walls of Sateda City, and declared any daughter of hers would be named Hannena after her mother, but she conceded that a second daughter – since they'd decided on only two – would be Florena after Nyre's culled wife. The culling was the reason he didn't have children of his own, since he never remarried. Or so the story went. Still, any accidental girl-child after that would be Ronena after his best man, Trin had declared. Yep, Ronon remembered well the gentle ribbing as well as the ensuing guffaws throughout the entire wedding party and guests. Ronon and Trin then did the complicated elbow/wrist bump akin to dueling swords, and a thunderous double chest thump - the Satedan equivalent of that Terran high-five and knuckle-knock, all under colored spotlights followed by a drum roll and dance music.

Ronon squatted under the mesmerizing yet waning light of the Athosian firestarter, breathing in eye-watering piss fumes, and recalled Trin's humble origins. Ronon rubbed his eyes again with the heels of his hands.

Trin had been an orphan, his entire family wiped out during a Wraith culling on some obscure world. While on a knife-buying spree, Ronon's uncle, Nyre, had scooped up some bawling toddler, who had been wandering, naked, filthy and half-starved around the empty village streets, eating bugs and worms to stay alive, and had brought him home to Sateda. Nyre had called him Trin Non – Gift From Above – and had declared him his own son.

Not everyone in the Dex clan was happy with an outsider entering their hallowed ranks, but the three-year old Ronon didn't give a borrma's ass. He had an instant boy cousin roughly the same age as him, whom he happily taught everything he knew about knives, which was already just about everything, and found a ready and willing student in his cousin Trin. Yeah, Trin. How many boys had time for full names, when there was knife throwing and arm wrestling to be had? Game to be hunted? Fish to be fished? Birds to be shot out of the sky? Trin had eventually called him Rone after calling him Wonon for the longest time. When they played worrohgugs and hunters at around the age of five, they were a very growly and ferocious Rrr and Trr.

They went on that trip to the Shrine of Talus alongside endless aunts and uncles and cousins when they were both six going on seven. Rrr and Trr had shared their disdain for old relatives that day, but with the passage of time, had wished them all still present, and longed for the 'olden days' they so readily dismissed when their ages were still in single figures.

Ronon smiled. Then frowned. His grandfather had died of the second childhood that day at the shrine. When the first wail arose from one of their aunts, they both ran off in silence to the waterfall, and just poked and gouged the rocks, and scraped off lichen with their knives, killing whatever moved. Especially if they looked like Iratus bugs. Scaly-backed frogs and toads didn't fare well that day either, neither did slugs or snails.

Ronon grinned, then sighed deeply, and he choo-chooed his breath to finally calm himself down.

When they had found Trin after his prolonged abduction by the Banii after some offworld skirmish or other, there was nothing but joy. Plans had gone ahead for the wedding. Trin had grinned like an idiot, his portrait-perfect white teeth flashing. After working hard towards recovery, his cuz could have been one of those Terran supermodel dudes if it hadn't been for the scars.

In hindsight, Trin had grinned way too much, never speaking of his ordeal. He had looked dashing, in his gold shirt and pants and sandals, in contrast to Jalena's silver bridal gown and slippers. Trin had been recovered reasonably intact, his scars hidden for the most part, and Nyre was the happy father of the groom.

Nothing could dissuade Nyre from how Trin was far too upbeat after his ordeal at the hands of the Banii. Nyre had poopooed it all, declaring as father of the groom in the Satedan equivalent that 'chicks dig scars'. In Satedan, it was more akin to 'fillies admire colts that gallop in and out of briar patches', though the Terran version suited Ronon's own propensity towards the short and sweet.

_Chicks_ _had better dig scars. Or briar-slashed colts. _

Which led him back to Sheppard.

Sheppard was a mess beyond belief.

Sure, his buddy Sheppard did okay on the chick front. The filly front. Even the colt front. He'd seen both sexes admire Sheppard, who was woefully oblivious to the adoration - woefully ill-equipped in his response to said adoration. Or was he? Yeah, superficially. In reality, John Sheppard let no-one in. Like Trin. In the end, Trin hadn't even let Jalena back in. Ronon concluded that John Fucking Sheppard and Trinnon Fucking Dex were related if only by their middle names.

Ronon pummeled the wall.

And ignored an angry shush from Teyla.

And ignored a 'Seriously?' from McKay.

And ignored a tut from Beckett.

And ignored another sick squeal from Sheppard.

Ronon succumbed once more to his musings over the grate and firestarter.

He had been Trin's swordbearer. Jalena had chosen her best friend, Melena, to be hers. Per Satedan tradition, the bride and groom would hold their ceremonial swords against each other's throats, symbolizing trust.

Jalena was beautiful beyond belief on this her day, her night. Even her freckles appeared to twinkle. She even glued rhinestones on the most prominent of them. Yet before long, his eyes wandered to Melena, and hers to him. They both wore copper from head to toe. It set off her hair, and from the way she looked at him, eyeing him up and down, it must've set off his coloring, too. It made him feel special. He vowed to ask her out. Maybe once he'd knocked back a few. And she'd say yes. Hey, a guy could dream. The three-day ceremony plus his own ardor ended abruptly when Trin snatched up his sword, screamed about Them coming for him - and fell upon it.

Them?!

Ronon realized he'd been waving the firestarter over the grate like he'd been contemplating a lit hearth, and watching the flames flicker for his own amusement, relaxation and comfort. He was being selfish, this he knew. But, by the Ancients, how the memories hurt.

Ronon sniffed, then snapped back to the here and now. Trinnon Fucking Dex had bailed on him. John Fucking Sheppard was still here. Barely.

With a reluctant heave-ho of his body, he sprung up, yelled another Satedan battle cry in order to sum up a modicum of courage, and finally dared approach the pathetic heap in the far corner. Teyla was behind Sheppard's head, stroking the man's unruly yet patchy hair and crooning, humming one of those lullaby things she usually reserved for TJ and those tiny, orphaned victims of Wraith cullings.

And that little beggar boy Sheppard sacrificed himself for.

Sheppard had sacrificed his mental and physical health, even his career.

And they had sacrificed their integrity.

And they had offered Sheppard up like a yearling pinnafrel to slaughter.

It was betrayal, pure and simple.

Rodney stood to one side in an uncommon silence, one fist tucked under his armpit, the other stuffed in his mouth. Beckett was trying to unravel Sheppard from a fetal position. Sheppard remained stiff. Twisted. Beckett sighed, and signaled for the marines to roll him as is onto the stretcher. He then tucked a blanket around him. About time. This place was cold enough to freeze the balls off a Wraith worshipper.

Ronon took in a deep breath. He needed to be there for Sheppard as he hadn't been for Trin, and that thought finally barreled him towards his erstwhile good buddy. He glared aside a bunch of marines, physically shoved McKay aside, and knelt. Teyla nodded even as she rocked her thin charge, and mouthed a silent thank you, then smiled a wan smile.

Ronon finally got to take a long, hard look at him. Sheppard. John Sheppard. John F Sheppard. Even after all his years as a runner and after everything else life had dealt him, he wanted to hurl. The man was pale and gaunt. No surprises there. He was curled up on his left side, his knees tucked under his chin and one arm wrapped across a severely bruised and wasted belly. His back was too much of a weeping mess to determine exactly what had been done to him there, but he had clearly been thoroughly beaten from head to toe. Endlessly. Scars old and new covered his entire body. His wrists and ankles were bruised and abraded. Scarred. Like... thick skin forming darkened bracelets and anklets scarred. Even his neck was abraded. No surprises there either. He still had some muscle definition, like he'd tried to exercise even in here, though he could only have run ten paces, rebounded off a wall, and run ten paces back only to rebound off another wall. Ronon shook at the mere thought of not being allowed to run free, to hit the zone, to fly.

Sheppard had also been shot. Twice. A glancing blow to his head judging by the hairless nick in the back of his head, and apparently some kind of through and through near his collarbone. Infected, according to Beckett. What was beyond disturbing was the dumb grin on his face, and the dumb thing he was clutching in a death grip. Tucked under his chin. Ronon wanted to snatch it away, toss it across the cell. It looked like a cloth doll. And Sheppard was constantly sniffing it. Now that was just plain sordid.

Then suddenly with all his heart Ronon simply wanted to scoop what was left of Sheppard up, and run with him. Run with him forever. Just keep running, with John F Sheppard draped over his shoulder or clutched against his chest, or even tucked under his arm, chuckling the while at the fun of it, with Sheppard struggling to bribe him with more and more outrageous snacks he could never deliver. Run, until he fell off the face of a planet, until someone else larger and more powerful and more compassionate scooped them both up, and ran with them, too. Back to the jumper. Back through the gate. Direct to the infirmary. Whacking and bypassing and bowling over everything and everybody. But the infirmary had come to Sheppard in kit form, courtesy of Carson Beckett, who was fixing him up for transport according to procedure and protocol. Except Sheppard was now writhing and mumbling. His eyes went wide and unseeing. Sheppard made to speak, though it clearly cost him. Cost everybody. His voice was hoarse and gravelly most likely from disuse.

"Hook!"

Teyla scanned the cell, wide-eyed. Ronon jabbed a forefinger towards the corner. She winced, then nodded.

"No more hooks, John. You are safe!"

"Keep talking to him while we strap him onto the stretcher, there's a good lad."

"Lost… "

"Colonel! John! We have found you."

Sheppard's eyes opened to a slit, and scanned them up and down, scanning then closing, scanning them closing, then rolled into the back of his head.

"Why is he holding that thing? It looks like those stripey boxers he flashes at us on a regular basis. Or used to... " Rodney raked his fingers through his hair. "Shit… "

"I suspect whatever it is is a source of comfort to him now then. Okay, lads. Lift!"

As the burly marines lifted the stretcher bearing Sheppard, Ronon finally caught a glimpse of the thing he was clutching and sniffing. Something he had purposefully denied himself witnessing upon entrance to this hole. A cloth doll. Ronon's eyes went wide.

It was made of Sheppard's own boxers, which were probably once his regular, favored and pristine blue and white ones. Yeah, he'd caught glimpses of Sheppard's mostly stripey underwear on and off. The doll looked either tea-dyed or piss-dyed or- worse. Ronon tried to wrench the doll out of his fierce grip.

"Nooo!" Sheppard cried weakly. "Please!"

"Let go of it, Sheppard."

"Please! Leave him alone!"

"Leave who alone?"

"My b-best buddy. I have one."

"And who might that be, son?"

"Wil - "

"Will we what, son?"

"Wil-son!"

"Give it up, Colonel!" snarled some jarhead or other as he snatched the thing Sheppard was clutching, ripping it, whereupon the wreck that was once Sheppard screamed and flailed and snatched at the ether. Where the strength came from was anybody's guess.

Ronon smacked the jarhead upside the head. He decided he'd rather watch The Ring, The Exorcist and just about any other 'The' movie, whereby the Terrans smugly pretended to face their dumb fears with a box and a remote and a protective bowl of popcorn between themselves and _Them_. The Undead. Just maybe the Wraith weren't the worst enemy. The human imagination, the human propensity for vindictiveness far supplanted anything the Wraith could dole out. You want the Undead? Swing by humankind for the experience of a deathtime.

There was no escape. Neither in the Milky Way nor in Pegasus. He'd witnessed both. There was talk about heading out to Andromeda. Ronon already knew in his heart of hearts what they would find there. He wondered if that primitive symbol had anything to do with yet another galaxy full of monsters.

Ronon pressed the cloth whatever-it-was back into Sheppard's outstretched hands, and gently folded his poor, broken fingers around it. Sheppard clutched the thing to his chest, and relaxed visibly. Ronon composed himself, sauntered calmly over to the latrine, kneeled, and promptly threw up his last meal.

Ronon scowled. This wasn't Sheppard. Apart from the jagged, spiky hair and the overall shape and proportions of the body below him, it couldn't be. Sheppard didn't do defeated. He might do glazed over, but the occasional sick, half-staff, pinprick-pupil look around hooded, watery eyes invariably went hand in hand with the clenched jaw, the resolve - the determined set of his body informing everyone that he was undefeated, defiant to the end.

He almost wanted Sheppard to tell him that he could not be vinced. They would all laugh, remembering that sick a-hole Lucius Lavin's unfounded claims to superpowers, and that final, well-deserved kick in the nungers. Ronon would high-five Sheppard - okay, maybe low-five, given his current condition and position - then scoop him up and haul his sorry ass back to Atlantis, then Sheppard himself would flash that irritating half-smirk, and declare that he was good. And starved. "Bring me food," he'd say.

Everyone around him - his team, a bunch of marines, the nursing staff, would all chuckle as the ice broke, knowing Sheppard would live to fight another day. All would be well with the galaxy. The known universe. Their savior was hale, hearty and - home.

Ronon could barely stand to see Sheppard like this, huddled into a tight ball as he was, looking up surreptitiously from time to time, scanning the cell they'd found him in, one moment wild-eyed, then bleary-eyed, doe-eyed – blank-eyed, those expressive, soulful eyes changing like the weather over the sedentary, unchanging rock formation of his stiff body. Ronon found himself shuffling on the spot. For want of a meaningful gesture, he slammed his fists down against his thighs.

"Damn you, Sheppard!"

"Settle, Ronon. If you can't help here, I'd rather you left. Go up top. There's a good lad."

Sheppard flinched at the raised voice, and let out a squeak.

_Sheppard! You dumb bastard!_

"I'm leaving. Call me when you need me."

"More like an if," McKay mumbled.

With a growl, Ronon pushed passed Rodney McKay, and charged back up the stone steps near their point of ingress, causing Teyla to flatten herself against the wall, through endless thick double doors with their locks blasted open - his doing - and into some courtyard. Exercise yard, maybe. He looked around at the now empty watchtowers, and the nasty barb wire fence.

Sheppard had been the only prisoner, or so their intelligence went via that Genii weasel, Ladon Radim. With nothing or no-one to shoot, Ronon charged right back downstairs, this time almost bowling Teyla over. He peeked in, paced up and down, and watched as Beckett and another medic still tried in vain to uncurl Sheppard from a fetal position. Rodney was muttering endless crap at Sheppard, but Ronon tuned him out.

Physical abuse to Sheppard was beyond evident, but what about the damage to his mind?

That wasn't him, but Ronon guessed maybe six harsh and torturous months in captivity like this might do this to anyone. Essentially in solitary confinement for the bulk of it, according to one of the five guards he either pummeled or stunned to death. He wished now he'd ripped their helmets off to check who or what they were underneath. He could always go check the bodies. In case they were some new threat. But what of the months before? What happened between his abduction and this? In the intervening eighteen months? He already knew what happened before his abduction, to his neverending shame.

Still he had hoped Sheppard was stronger than this, hoped he might overcome anything dealt him. Sheppard was his commanding officer, and as such, he should, by rights, pull himself together. And command.

Command!

Fucking, fucking, fucking command!

Sheppard was tough. Had been tough. Trin didn't make it. Trin had subsequently been lost in a world of torment, constantly asking for permission to even take a dump at first, then seemingly snapping out of it, until one day, his wedding day, he totally flipped out.

"Fix him!" he cried as he stood there in the rubble of the final blast hole, his fists clenching and unclenching, "He's not Trin! Sheppard's not Trin!"

Teyla and Rodney turned to him, and both mouthed 'Who?!'

Ronon felt his equilibrium shift. From vertical to horizontal. He leaned against the wall, then slid slowly down it. He thought he might have seen details in the dirt floor before he keeled over, and might or might not have made a dent if not a crater in it. It beheld gray swirly patterns and white spots. Then again, maybe it didn't.

_Come back to us, John! Come back! Come back - to me..._


	3. Chapter 3

A/N - Happy '21st', Joanie! Special birthday prezzie whump coming up! XD

*winks, bangs tuning fork on Sheppard's adorable cowlicks, then sings tunefully*

Twenty-one todaaayyy! (Bang!)

Twenty-one todaaayyy! (Ting!)

She's got the key of the door

Never been twenty-one before...

Yeah, right. Oops! Did I say that out loud? My bad. Snorfle.

(Bang! Bang! Bang! Ting!Wallop!Smack! P'doi-oi-oinnnggg!)

Yep, just whumped Sheppard with a tuning fork. Tee hee. Though those defiant cowlicks are fighting back... Sheesh, not even blood keeps 'em down... :P

...

Oh, while I'm at it with the whole A/N thing - for anyone who hasn't read my profile to check the kind of whump I write, rest assured that I have never written a death fic, neither am I about to, and I never seriously maim anyone, least of all Sheppard. I just whump the living daylights out of him, then let him bounce back looking a tad rumpled and feeling a tad woozy. Yep, it's all 'pretty' whump. Says she. Mostly drippy blood and emo. Plenty of both in this fic! Anyway, on with the tale...

...

Two years earlier…

"Torren!"

Teyla staggered onwards, her torn, bare feet shackled, her keen ears straining to locate the helpless, fitful, echoing wails of her precious baby son being stolen away by Michael's hybrids, as they bounded away from her, winding up and down shafts, over and under rocks, in and out of rock pools and through endless tunnels, screeching and chittering the while.

She could not gain ground, but that would never prevent her from trying. Her wrists were bound together behind her back, wreaking havoc on her balance, plus she was both gagged and blindfolded, relying on her lifetime training to force her body onward. Never did it mean more than it did today.

She rested her head against the rock face, sucking in whoops of breath, allowing her tears to soak into the chafing rag. Then she had an idea, and she mentally berated herself for not coming up with it sooner. Her son's life was at stake! She frantically rubbed the back of her head against the coarse rock surface, loosening the knots of both gag and blindfold. She could still hear her son's cries, which rallied her, and the wicked, taunting cackling of the hybrids.

She scraped away at both rags with renewed vigor and at the cost of patches of hair and strips of scalp. The rags eventually fell away, for which she thanked the Ancients with a stifled sob, and she worked on the ropes about her wrists, sawing them off against the nearest sharp edge, and even intermittently attacking them with her teeth, growling the while in frustration. Once free, she fell to her knees, found a loose rock, and pounded the shackles until her fingertips cracked and bled. The shackles refused to budge. She screamed a dire Athosian curse, promising death and destruction far worse than any Wraith could inflict, then cried out the name of her firstborn once more.

Torren bawled anew, his voice made tinier and hollower by the ever increasing distance between her and his mutant kidnappers. She hobbled along, desperate to reach her baby before Michael could experiment on him, use his DNA to manufacture perfect slaves to his pointless cause, with hate not love as his driving force to dominate the galaxy. But – Michael was dead, was he not? Maybe she had only killed his clone. Maybe there were infinite Michaels out there. She could not allow a single one of them to create infinite Torrens. She might never ever find... the original...

She thanked the stars Torren was not John's, though she often wished he were. What could one of these Michaels have done with the combined DNA of their joint offspring? Teyla shuddered.

Then there he was down some tunnel. Kanaan. Back-lit in blue by a single bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. Her traitorous partner. Re-hybridized and clutching a traditional Athosian baby carry cloth to his chest complete with their precious charge.

Why could he not resist Michael? The man lacked strength of will, strength of character, something of which she was now all too painfully aware. What on Athos had she been thinking that night? She had been lonely, and had drunk too much ruus wine. Still, she had her Torren from that brief, unsatisfying union. She could see her darling son's chubby bare legs, his dimpled, fat-braceleted fists, and his fluffy dark baby hair. She reached out an arm, and somehow managed to keep her hand from shaking.

"You are too late, Teyla. Behold our son!"

"Weakling! I abhor you!"

Kanaan stood four-square, and abruptly turned the baby around to face her, a gleeful if not triumphant expression on his twisted face. She knew he could now see deep into her soul, that she no longer loved him. She never truly did. His expression was one of accusation. That she loved another. And in that instant, she knew it too.

Torren giggled, a strange, tinny sound. As she neared them, almost tripping, ready to snatch her beloved son back from the clutches of the wannabe Wraith, the man she had once fiercely loved with all her heart and soul, (or so she had momentarily convinced herself,) she saw what they'd done to her perfectly everything baby boy, how far they had already progressed in turning him into one of them.

Torren's once lovely soft baby skin was now pasty and slimy-looking, his warm, brown irises had become sickly and pus-colored, his once round pupils now mere slits. He even sported those tell-tale tubular glands beside each nostril, though what their purpose was she might never know, neither did she care. Either way, her son was now more Wraith than human.

"Torren!"

"Mama! Maaamaaa!"

The sound was bi-tonal, yet he was still her Torren John. She would love him regardless. Unconditionally. She would bring out the best in him. Nurture him. Like Rosemary did in Rosemary's Baby. Yes, the collection of DVDs in the rec room was indeed strange, yet compelling. She refused to watch The Omen. The idea of a child being born of a dark, hellish hunting dringhedal was too much for her sensibilities. She prayed the tale was not based on a true story. John's homeworld was indeed a strange, paradoxical place. Full of wonders, yet also chock full of horrors.

"He is not your son. He is mine!"

"Hah! He is not yours, Miss Emmagan, but you may take custody this squalling, snot-nosed brat in his stead, and welcome."

That voice! Kolya? It could not be! Should not be!

Teyla's eyes flew open as a small, frail, filthy ragamuffin with ratty, knotted hair almost to his shoulders landed with a thud in her lap, and clung to her with fists and toes like a baby mindra, his unkempt nails digging into her skin, his knuckles white. He latched onto her with the glue of desperate need. She made to wrap her arms around him, peel him off her yet hold him tight, soothe him, but her arms refused to budge from a fixed position. Why was she restrained? In a chair in some sparse, cavernous, windowless room? Where was she? Whose child was this? Where was her Torren John? Where did Kanaan go? When did the rock tunnels dissolve? When did Kolya appear? Where was the rest of her team?

Then she understood with the shocking clarity of wakefulness that she had just escaped one nightmare only to be cast into another.

Teyla twisted her arms in her restraints, but only succeeded in scraping her already abraded wrists. She relaxed her limbs, closed her eyes, repeated an Athosian mantra, and breathed in. And out. In. And out. Ah! Torren was safe in Atlantis. Of course. Where else would he be? Kanaan was on the mainland acting as guide on a birthday fishing trip with the current Carson Beckett. She, John, Rodney and Ronon had been on a mission to find out more about some bountiful planet including a... meet'n'greet? Is it? ...with the inhabitants, the Damahii, another innocuous colony of farmers if not hunter-gatherers. Much like the Genii once were. She could not recall anything beyond stepping through the gate, listening to Rodney's constant complaints about not having gone fishing with Beckett like he should have done the first time around, muttering about veggie bacon growing here like manna in the desert and why could it not have been donuts, and then the red flashes of rapid stunner fire.

Teyla shook her head to orient herself. Kolya. Hale and hearty, sweaty and pockmarked, standing before her in his itchy-looking uniform, and not dead at all. She rallied.

"Explain yourself, Kolya. Explain this poor boy to me. He clearly needs immediate attention. If you will not do anything for him, free me and allow me to tend him. Please!" She was not averse to begging. Not when it came to a child. He could not have been more than four years old.

"All in good time. I'm glad you are finally awake to witness this, though you are somewhat entertaining when in the throes of a nightmare. Did you know you talk in your sleep? Who is Torren?"

Teyla clamped her lips shut, tensed up, and glared. Kolya smirked, then raised a bulky communication device to his mouth.

"No matter. Wheel him in."

Teyla heard a scraping sound as two hefty henchmen hauled in a box frame from a door to her left. Teyla shot a look across the way, and instantly recognized the limp silhouette of the man chained by his wrists and ankles to each corner. Colonel Sheppard. His head was slumped against his chest, and he was naked except for his boxers. She gasped.

She knew Kolya of old. He once brazenly sent them video feed of almost torturing Sheppard to death using a Wraith, the one they latterly called Todd. She expected nothing less of him now. John had later killed the man in a shoot-out in some 'backwater hamlet' as Rodney would put it. Or so they had all once thought. Rumor and Genii intelligence via Ladon Radim and his cronies had it he was still alive, and still causing murder and mayhem in the galaxy in his endeavor to seize what he still believed to be rightfully his; the leadership of the Genii. If only the man had more sensible goals, though if that included settling down and producing offspring, the galaxy would not be better for it.

"What are you doing?" Teyla squirmed against her restraints.

"Why Miss Emmagan, I'm about to punish Colonel Sheppard before your very eyes, whereupon you will subsequently each make your own contribution to his timely demise."

Teyla's stomach did a flip-flop. Each meant her, Ronon and Rodney.

Kolya swaggered over to a bench to her left, and took off his uniform jacket, and handing it to a goon, sucking in his ample belly the while. He ran his sausage fingers inordinately tenderly over an array of... implements, and selected one. Teyla watched wide-eyed as he sauntered back over to her team leader and friend, bearing a thick-handled whip with knots in each of its many tails. She could feel herself breathing heavily, realized she was fish-mouthing, knowing she was giving away her fear of the terrible scene that was about to unfold.

Kolya snapped his fingers, whereupon the two goons hauled a pail of water, swung it back and forth a few times, then tossed the entire payload into John's face. Ice cubes clattered to the flagstone floor. John jerked, and leapt to full height and full-body tension with the shock of it, his muscles and sinews bunching. John looked about him, dazed. His eyes finally rested on their captor.

John relaxed, and pulled off an easy slouch even though chained hand and foot, his head cocked to one side. He managed to croak a single word. And a typical Colonel Sheppard half smirk.

"Kolya." Water dripped from his bangs, and trickled either side of his nose. He slurped in a mouthful, then spat it out on the floor.

"Johnny Boy."

John's eyes went wide, and he tensed once more. Perhaps with the familiarity of his nomenclature, though she had never heard him called Johnny Boy by anyone else before. Why, it was some mere affectionate variation of his name, was it not?

Kolya stepped behind John, whereupon her team leader's breathing became more and more rapid.

"Brace yourself, Johnny Boy. This particular whip dispenses electricity." He flipped a switch on the handle, and the thing emitted a high-pitched whine. "I shall lay on from the right. Fair warning." Kolya was left-handed. He stepped back, flicked the whip, drew it behind him, and let rip.

Teyla felt herself judder as John jerked and flinched tight-lipped with each lash, his face flushing red and his neck cording. Blue-purple sparks jetted and zigzagged about his form, dissipating along the length of the box frame, fizzing out into yellow like those Earth sparklers she had come across on a visit to John's land on something he called the Fourth of July, some annual celebration involving much eating and drinking and flag waving preferably on a waterfront, and something he called an organized firework display. Kolya was relentless. In between strikes, he shook out his hand, drew himself back, and struck John over and over again.

The Genii was strong. He threw in his heavy bulk behind each strike. This was too harsh a punishment. More like an assault from those rockets and screamers she had flinched from despite reassurances that they were benign unless handled wrong. As John began to pout and grimace, she looked away, but as John began to puff then moan then grunt, she looked back. He was watching her, his eyes scrunching up with each blow. John watched her even as he thrashed involuntarily against his restraints. Perhaps he hoped she would not watch him in this state, in this predicament. He was... embarrassed? Humiliated? Ashamed? If she knew him well, it was most likely more so from his semi-nakedness than from any physical pain. He shook his head at her, his eyes affixing her, imploring her. Don't look, Teyla! Don't watch me! Like this! Yes, she knew him well, she conceded.

He sucked in his lips, chewed on them, and looked away, tension about his eyes. His face betrayed his agony time and time again. The onslaught was relentless. Each blow made her eyes sting, her heart thud, her skin twitch and her flesh crawl. She found herself struggling against her own restraints.

There were tears in John's eyes.

"John! Do not be ashamed! Please ride this out as best you can. You have been granted - " – a high threshold for pain – " a means to deal with this. Take yourself elsewhere!"

He snorted even as another lash descended on his bare torso, and he arched his back, rattling the wooden frame, his lips drawn in, stifling a cry. He panted freely, clearly struggling to contain his pain, redirect it, dissipate it. What was she thinking? He had been trained for this. He knew to take himself elsewhere.

"Kauai... M'surfin'... Takin'... y'with me... "

Kolya dealt him another blow. Blood now spritzed from his left flank like a punctured hosepipe.

"Sea water. Stings cuts."

Teyla counted the moments between each strike. They were becoming more and more intermittent, like a passing thunderstorm.

_Be strong!_

"Been to... Israel. The Holy Land. All over. Country's tiny... about the size... of New Jersey. Can you... believe it? Seems bigger. Like Atlantis. Gotta... take you there... some day."

"Sun, sea and sand, Col- John?"

"Yeah. Been to the Dead Sea. Nothing lives in it. S'not really water. It's a tur- turquoise blue salt and mineral solution. Aagh! Stings... like a bitch. But you really can float. I... wanna float. I hafta... "

"Float now, John. Take yourself there. Would I could come with you. Perhaps one day. Very soon." Teyla felt her breath hitch. She ached to be able to touch him, ground him, let him know at least one team-mate was there for him, even as Kolya lashed him again for no discernible reason. Sparks flew from his body, ranging far and wide and dissipating into the ether like spent fireworks or even like lightning. She could smell blood and burnt flesh.

"Float like a butterfly, st-sting like a bee." John chuckled, then gasped. Kolya had administered another strike, though he finally seemed to be losing steam. Kolya stopped to shake out his wrist and flex his fingers. She guessed flogging and shocking at the same time was somewhat tiring.

Floating. Stinging. Butterfly. Bee. Some Earth reference, a quote, no doubt. She would have to ask him who had said that and why. Right now, she had to focus on her team leader, even if it meant watching his copious blood pool at his ankles as well as spatter outwards. John could not take much more and live.

"Kolya. Acastus. How many... "

"Lashes? Why, one for half my strike force. For my part."

She shook her head. She did not want to consider what part she might be forced to play in this.

"Please! Do not do this! He does not deserve this! This is beyond brutal. Colonel Sheppard was merely defending his home! You know this! Kolya! You were once a soldier!"

Kolya glared at her, then switched off the whip, hooking it in his belt, whereupon she sighed with relief. She had lost count, but she knew it had been between twenty and thirty from that horrific charged cat. John's head sank, and he finally collapsed, hanging limp in his chains.

"What purpose has this served? Shocking and whipping him senseless and making me watch?! Are you beyond mad?!"

"Ah, Miss Emmagan. This is but foreplay. I have merely prepared him for you. I expect you to finish the job. If you do not do everything you're told, this revolting beggar child dies."

Kolya hoisted the tiny boy by the back of his ragged shirt, and threw him to the floor. The boy scrabbled into a corner, and huddled there, pressing his scrawny back flush against the wall.

John looked towards the boy, his expressive eyes became questioning. In one look, she knew he was asking about him, who he was, why he was even there.

_John... I wish I..._

Kolya strode over to her, and grabbed her chin, turning her face towards his. He smelled of sweat, blood and cheap aftershave, and his upper body steamed from his exertion. Teyla held her breath so she would not breathe him in, taint her very being, though she felt her soul was about to become very dark indeed.

"Don't think to question my resolve, Athosian." Without turning he head, he muttered, "Cut him down. Release her."

She watched as John fell twitching to the floor, the occasional spark still dissipating though his fingers and toes and one presenting battered ear and those cowlicks, which now stuck out more than usual, almost as if he had just towel-dried his head, and had left it uncombed. She had often suspected that was his norm. Until now. He raised his right hand slightly, and twirled his first two fingers in a shaky yet familiar gesture, perhaps in acknowledgement of her, yet still dispensing static. She drew comfort from his fortitude. They could both overcome this. They had to for the boy's sake.

Teyla drew herself out of her chair upon her release, took off her jacket, walked over to the boy, and draped it around his filthy, bony little shoulders. The boy hid himself in its folds, sniffing it the while, perhaps finding something akin to a familiar scent. He then started to suck his thumb.

She was not sure she had ever seen a child in such terrible straits. And to think another human being was doing this, and not a Wraith. She would do anything in her power to help him. And that included...

No, she could not do this. John was in no state to take any more of this so-called retribution. She watched wide-eyed as Kolya walked back to his bench, selected matching implements from the array, then waved them in her face. Straps. She stiffened. She understood in an instant what he wanted from her.

"Beat me instead." She drew herself to full height, and stared Kolya in the eye. "I implore you!"

"Beat Colonel Sheppard mercilessly, or I beat that brat with these. Mercilessly. Again, one blow for half my strike force. Do you believe that pathetic creature could possibly survive?"

Kolya held them out. She looked at them long and hard. Two thick leather straps about the length and width of her forearm, with handles as thick as a bantos rod. She could not do this!

Despite herself, she took them from him. At least now she possessed weapons. She spun them in the air like bantos rods, getting the feel of them. Then she lunged at Kolya, striking both his arms, causing him to drop both his gun and that bulky communicator of his. She lunged at him again, only to be taken down by his whip. One strike across her bare shoulders, and she almost lost control of her bowels. Not so with the contents of her stomach. Teyla bent double, and heaved up her last meal. How was John enduring this? Kolya shook out his hands once more, and looked at her as if mildly amused.

"I will allow you one small victory, Miss Emmagan. Now look to your right."

She glanced involuntarily towards where she'd last seen the little boy, and her stomach did another flip-flop. The two grinning goons held him up between them, gripping him by the shoulders. She could not understand how they could condone such ill treatment towards one so young. No, they were surely bluffing, but she could not take that chance. Kolya threw the whip to one of the goons.

"Now you have that little temper tantrum out of your system, you will proceed to inflict bodily harm on Colonel Sheppard until I tell you to stop."

This could not be real. She could not do this. Not to him. But – the boy!

_I cannot!_ she thought, though her bare feet moved her despite herself.

Teyla could barely see through her tears as she approached the prone and bloodied form of her battered team leader and friend. Now she was closer to him, she could see how already damaged he was. She refused to strike his back, which looked raw, though at least these particular implements of torture were not electrified. His entire back was purple verging on blue if not black, and the marks upon it were a lurid pink, raised, ragged and raw. Many were bleeding. Where else dare she strike him? How hard? And when would she be allowed to stop? Some strikes had caught his bare arms. There was even a single lash mark on his face. She clenched her eyelids, warding off more tears, grateful that his eyes had not been injured, nor those full lips of his. One had landed on his right ear, causing it to swell and weep. And he had not once cried out, though he was panting close enough to hyperventilate.

She touched his right shoulder. He jerked, then went back to merely juddering from one of very many aftershocks. She could see a swathe of freckles across his tanned shoulders like the outer bands of a spiral galaxy, and those round, keloid scars from the glass that had embedded in his back when the gate exploded a few weeks ago. He had saved Zelenka back then, shielding him with his own body from the blast. It was so very him, and she found herself yearning for him.

She ran a finger over the tiny, two-pronged scar on his neck where the Iratus bug had fed on him. The scars on his right shoulder caused by embedded glass had been obliterated by the whip marks, which went down the back of his right arm. He had two scars on his left arm from bullet holes. Of course. She recalled both terrifying incidents.

She knelt down and carefully turned him onto one side, avoiding landing him on his abused back. Now she could see those impalement scars near both hips. Then she saw other scars. Many scars. Battle scars. From incidents she was not yet privy to. Perhaps he would recover from this, too, and forgive her. She might not be able to forgive herself for what she was about to do.

She thought about one day touching and exploring his stunning, naked body for giving them both pleasure rather than for giving him pain. She gasped in recognition of the depths of her feelings for this man, but it was too little too late. She had lost him before she had even found him. All because she let Kanaan in in the sorry belief she should 'hook up' with an Athosian. And she did not truly know if John might want her in return. She suspected he still held a... torch? Is it? ...for the long dead Elizabeth Weir.

"I want him awake for this." Kolya kicked John onto his front, and snapped his fingers, whereupon two goons threw another bucket of iced water over John's back. John jerked, then moaned softly.

Teyla finally resorted to begging.

"Please. Do not make me do this."

The two goons raised the whip to the boy, who curled up into such a tight ball, he reminded her of a spiky tildria. She dashed over to the boy, and knelt beside him.

"What is your name?"

"MMMama!"

Teyla groaned.

She knew what she had to do.

Her heart pounding, her legs shaking and threatening to give out, she turned away from the boy and cautiously approached John once more, crouched low, and touched her forehead to his. She received a residual jolt from his body, causing her hair to cling to her face and even fly up her nose. She felt his entire being responding to her like a lightning strike; felt his body stiffen, then relax. He had given in. She just hoped he would not give up.

"I can take it, Teyla. Save... the kid."

He knew. He had been watching out for the boy, too, and that he should endure this. For him. An innocent child.

"I will spare you as best I can, John. Think of katas. Of sparring. Of running. Of... flying." She stroked his hair reassuringly, brushing the static-filled strands away from his forehead, and smoothed them back, her hand finding his hair wet from lying in a pool of his own spattered blood. She ran a hand from his forehead to his cowlicks, which stood steadfast and defiant. She almost laughed when she realized not even gore would keep his hair under control. She stroked the damp hair at his temple, and ran her hand behind his welted presenting ear, then along his jawline to his cheek. She left her hand there momentarily, whereupon his half-lidded gaze found her face. John kept pursing his lips then pouting, his Adam's apple bobbing the while. He was sickly pale. He was clearly already in agony, and verging on going into shock.

"Trust... you... "

She read more in his expressive eyes.

This is so hard, Teyla! It hurts so bad!

And...

Do it!

Teyla wiped away the sudden flood of tears for the nth time that sad, sad mission, and steeled herself. John trusted her. He trusted her! Though no-one should ever trust her again. Perhaps not even her own Torren John.

She brushed her own flyaway, static-filled hair out of her face with bloodied hands, pulled it back, twisted it up, and tucked it in at the nape of her neck. She drew in a breath, let it out, then drew it in once more. And then she struck John Sheppard hard on the back of his legs. Along his forearms. Anywhere but on his back. She was rewarded by some satisfied chuffing sounds from Kolya.

John Sheppard jerked with each blow, thrashed then twitched, but still she spun about him, twirled, finding solace in her katas, sidestepped copious splashes of spilled blood, barely regarding his reactions to her sordid ministrations. She deflected most blows to his body against the floor instead, praying Kolya would hear merely a thwacking sound and delight in John's blood spattering far and wide, and not consider where those blows actually fell. She built up a sweat, closed her eyes, and lost herself in an unholy dance.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N - just thought I might as well post another chapter, though I really must stick to every other week rather than every week after this. Yarp. :P

...

Rodney squatted in a miserable huddle against a frigid, slightly concave boulder close to the bars of his chilly cell, and watched as his breath frosted in the gloom even as he rubbed his upper arms for some semblance of warmth. Beyond the bars, a string of intermittent, dull red lanterns graced the snaking, rough-hewn hallway like a string of malevolent fairy lights. It was like being shut in a dark room that'd been hacked out of rock. Was this place an old abandoned mine? A tacky movie set? It could have been either.

The boulder – his current favorite since most of the others were downright gnarly - was a little smoother than the rock walls making up the bulk of the cell, and he wondered how many pathetic prisoners such as himself had nestled into it, their clothing or even bare flesh polishing the thing smooth over time, as they cowed there, dreading whatever hideous death or fate worse than death their captors had in store for them.

Stalactites and stalagmites glimmered and sparkled, grinning at him like the bloody, carnivorous teeth of some cornered, snarling, cave-dwelling dragon of Doom. Rodney snuggled closer to his rock buddy, and could just about make out his unkempt reflection in the polished face. If the ambient light had been brighter, he would have seen rather than felt his slightly stubbly chin, his grimy teeth – he ran his tongue over the top ones – ew! – then the bottom ones – double ew! - then chopped his left hand up and down over his mouth to check his the state of his breath. Triple ew!

What he could see as he scanned his boulder, as if in a clouded mirror where the silver backing had worn off, black against his red face, was a thick, split upper lip. Ow! He also had a ragged wound in his left arm where his sub-cu used to be. No neat laser surgery here - the bastards had gouged it out with a spork. He'd passed out Kavanagh-style when the spork came at him, thank the stars.

The dark shape on his upper arm looked like some maniacal Rorschach test.

Today it was a tarantula.

Yesterday it was an octopus.

At least the thing was shrinking as the blood smears wore away, and the scabs flaked off. Perhaps tomorrow it would be a daddy long legs, and so on and so forth until his arm ended up sporting an amoeba.

It'd been several days since he'd been tossed in here, stripped of his uniform and beaten senseless, and he couldn't quite decide if that boulder was beginning to look comforting or threatening. He was sorely tempted to give it eyes, a nose and a mouth like some makeshift snowman thingy using spittle if need be to make it a tad more friendly looking. A cheery snowman. Or rather – rockman. Anything for company. He toyed between calling it Frosty or Rocky. Either way, Rodney wouldn't feel quite so alone in the galaxy.

He strained his ears to hear... something. Anything. Even a mouse he could waste with a well-aimed pebble. All he heard was the sound of his own breathing, and a regular, reverberating plop of water like some leaky faucet. It was Chinese water torture. Damn those dripping stalactites. He resisted counting the seconds between drips by reciting pi to twelve decimals, though before long he found himself reciting it in sync with the drips, reaching pi to the power of whatever before starting out again as each drip reset his count. He struggled in vain to ignore it, which only made him think of it all the more. Of course, pi made him think of pie. Rodney sighed every time his stomach rumbled.

Out of boredom he rummaged around the cavern floor for any semblance of chalk or even something sharp, then he hit pay dirt; a flint chip. He scrabbled back to his boulder, and merrily scored a toothy grin, though he had to trace the line with his fingers to feel the score marks since they were too faint to see. Then he scored out two shallow eye holes.

Now the blasted thing had eyes to watch him with, and teeth to eat him with. Good thinking. Not.

There was only one thing for it – give it ample tatas. Make it feminine. Motherly. Wifely. Sisterly even. There was something oddly sensual about adding such features and appendages as he ran his fingers over the thing. Rodney decided he was losing it. With yet another weary sigh, he finally he gave the boulder a size 44 triple D cup, and called it Lola.

Rodney crabbed sideways to a nearby rock about two feet by one foot, scored himself some flaming logs, and pretended to warm his hands. He took himself off to the dreamscape of a Canadian winter – to actual snowmen, or snowpersons if you were that idiotically politically correct – and tobogganing, and good ol' snow days off school. Chucking snowballs at Jeannie was his favorite winter sport, especially stuffing them down the back of her neck, making her squeal. He shuddered, and hunched his shoulders at the thought of snow slithering down his own neck especially in this frigid environment. Yeah, she usually got her own back and then some. Right now, he felt like he'd been making snow angels in the buff. He'd not done that since he'd toked pot just the once in college. Okay, just the twice. Erm, make that thrice.

He had no idea where the rest of his team was, but he held out hope that Ronon hadn't also been captured by Kolya's ragtag band of loser renegades with comb-overs and half their teeth missing. He hadn't seen Ronon in the fracas that had brought him, Sheppard and Teyla down in a hail of darts on a routine mission. But where the hell were they? Apart from being incarcerated in some underground facility that looked like some ass-end set bits that didn't quite make the grade for Indiana Jones And The Temple of Doom.

Rodney set about cleaning under his nails with his flint chip. A manicure. A pedicure would have to wait as the light was too dim. So, here he was, enjoying the aftermath of yet another milk run mission gone south. Par for the course. And all for what? Beans? Like they needed more beans that were not of the coffee ilk, though cocoa beans came in at a close second. Screw tavas. Those things made him f- played havoc on his digestive system. Though here in his involuntary 'man cave', his arctic Fortress of Solitude, he could fart to his heart's content. Rodney belched instead.

He hadn't seen, heard or smelled another living soul in days. At least prison fodder arrived intermittently. Their own power bars somehow manifest themselves beside him while he slept. How very magnanimous of his Genii captors. Water, of course, came in the form of toothy stalactite drool.

Rodney's ears were constantly on the alert for unusual sounds. Like rats. He doubted mines had rats, but those Venetian catacombs in The Last Crusade had them, so knowing his luck, so would this miserable excuse for a scary movie set. Maybe the distant, scratchy sound he heard came from something akin to those blind, albino, algae-grazing mine moles, the likes of which they discovered on MX7-994, the craterous, spongy rock planet. They'd ended up roasting them on a spit when they ran out of actual food. Naturally, they tasted like chicken, albeit sans S'n'P and BBQ sauce or honey mustard. When he'd complained about the lack of seasoning and condiments, Sheppard had told him to buck up. Well, he'd see about that. Next time he visited Ear- home, he'd steal a bunch of ketchup packs and the rest from the likes of Mickey D's or BK or Wendy's, and store them in one of the pockets of his tac vest. Then he'd watch Sheppard's face fall when he bit them open, and drizzled them over his next meal of vermin, keeping them to himself. He might pass around one or maybe two of those freebie packs, mind, just to appear magnanimous if not save the day.

_Yo quiero Taco Bell_, he thought miserably as his mouth began to water. _Mucho._

He'd read somewhere about interviews with actual living cannibals, probably NatGeo, and that apparently people tasted like pork not chicken. Not that that had anything to do with his current predicament. No. He looked about him for a man-sized cauldron somewhere in the depths. There were times when he hated his mind.

Precisely how and when he fell asleep on any given day/night/wheneveritwas, Rodney didn't know. All he knew was he was rudely awakened from a nightmare about being cooked in a pot he couldn't clamber out of - frantically treading water alongside potatoes and leeks and carrots plus a bouquet garni or fifty - by the steady pounding of approaching boots; and his sorry carcass being dragged upright, using bars and not a pot rim for leverage. He gripped said bars in anticipation, and peered out into the gloom.

"Hello?" he whispered, his voice frail and needy.

Maybe he'd be reunited with his team? Though not Ronon. Definitely not Ronon. Not that he didn't care for Ronon, just that they all needed for him to not be captured. That hulking Satedan had to break them out of here, wherever 'here' was.

"Step away!"

Kolya.

_Crap..._

Rodney staggered backwards as snappily as he could as a bunch of goons flanking the disgraced Genii commander opened the squealing cell door, and threw a tiny, curvaceous body inside like some discarded rag doll. She was hot! No, she was Teyla. His bad. Rodney suddenly felt more aware of his nakedness. Somehow he also found his backbone. He gripped the bars of the cell, and glared at Kolya.

"Why… would you treat her like this? She's never done anything to you!" Rodney squeaked as he rushed to her side.

"Shut your fat mouth, McKay, or I'll shut it for you!" yelled a goon.

"Kidding, right? How very unoriginal of you! Did you perchance take a class in thug-speak?"

Kolya let out a chortle.

"Ah, of course. Cue the megalomaniacal laughter. Where's Sheppard? What have you done to him?" he demanded. Kolya had declared upon their capture that each of them in turn would betray their CO, cause him immeasurable suffering. Torture him of their own free will. That was _sooo_ not happening.

"You'll be reunited with him soon enough, my friend," the thug declared once more.

"Not your friend," he growled. He was channeling his inner Conan. Yup. Him or Clint Eastwood.

Rodney didn't care for the thug's words or his tone, but first things first. Teyla. She was essentially muttering hoarsely into thin air, her voice quavering. She squatted, rocking in an abject huddle with her arms wrapped protectively around her knees. It was so not Teyla. When she tucked her head into her chest, and began to sob, her entire body quaking, Rodney felt instant, stomach-churning panic. She was meant to remain strong! She was their den mother! Their housemother! He reached out to her cautiously, wondering if she might be injured. He really didn't want to alarm her any more than she clearly already was.

He rested a shaky hand on her bare shoulder, but she flinched, then shoved him aside, refusing to make eye contact. She scrabbled over to the far wall, her eyes darting everywhere as if looking for a spectral foe. Rodney crabbed over to her. Up close, he could now see she was sweaty, and her body juddered occasionally with spastic tremors. Her face was grubby and tear-stained. More alarming were the dark splatters over most of her clothing. She had obviously attempted to wipe blood from her face and arms judging by the smears.

Rodney's inner CSI kicked in. She didn't appear to be injured, which could only mean one thing. Sheppard. This was his blood. And that meant she - Oh, nononononono… Kolya had actually carried out his threat to use them to make Sheppard pay, though he couldn't think what leverage he could possibly have used against Teyla.

"Ah, Doctor McKay, I see from your enlightened, albeit comical expression that you have deduced correctly. Miss Emmagan has fulfilled her obligation, and you shall both be allowed to keep body and soul together for a short while longer."

Rodney leapt up, and rattled the bars of their cell in Sheppard-like defiance even as Kolya grinned coldly.

"Kolya?! You sneaky bastard. Not good to see you. So polite with the titles. Not. Makes you quite the gentleman. Uhm, not. What have you done to Sheppard? Scratch that – what did you make Teyla do to Sheppard? What obligation?" As if he didn't know.

"All in good time."

"Well, you can't make me harm Sheppard." Rodney thrust out his chin. "I won't hurt my best friend in two galaxies."

Though Teyla did.

She did.

Kolya chuckled. "Allow me to help expedite your decision."

Rodney heard more echoey footfall, and a snuffling sound perhaps of a small animal, probably larger than a cave mole and possibly rabid, and strained to see who or what was loping their way. One of Kolya's heavier-set grunts dragged along by the scruff of its neck some whimpering scrap of a kid around his niece's age, then cast it at Kolya's feet. Kolya hauled it up by one skinny arm. Kolya looked more like Mola Ram clutching a dazed Short Round after his and Indy's sound thrashing in the Temple of Doom. The cell door clanged open.

"Leave the kid alone!" More channeling. This time Indy_ and_ Sheppard, though at times it was hard to distinguish between the two.

"Let me assure you, Doctor McKay. This mere dishrag of a boy won't be missed. He's a local beggar. Vermin. I'd be doing this community a service by ridding them of him and the rest of his kind. They infest the gutters here. Live in the sewers. And they steal." Kolya's fake smile dropped, and his eyes went steely. "Quite the little Wraith snack, don't you think? All huge, soulful brown eyes like an injured puppy. Can you bear to see this pathetic, unloved little waif shrivel before your eyes, too agonized to even scream, because believe me, Doctor, I'll have your head in a brace and your eyes sewn open to force you to watch. Miss Emmagan understood this and accepted. Speaking of dishrags – I brought you fresh clothing. Enjoy the privilege. Believe me, it is unprecedented."

"My joy is inversely proportional to your generosity."

Kolya raised an eyebrow, then nodded to a goon, who thrust a bundle of clothes between the bars and into Rodney's arms, whereupon he immediately began to dress himself, fingers fumbling with buttons too large for the buttonholes, and drawstrings knotted like old shoelaces or gym bag ties. Pants and a tunic that'd seen better days, showing up as red with black stains in the ambient light, but hey, beggars couldn't be choosers. Rodney suddenly felt marginally less vulnerable, though that was ridiculous. Wasn't it?

"You snagged yourself another pet Wraith? You're all heart, Kolya. I won't let you harm a child on pain of, well, pain." Rodney winced.

Kolya chuckled mirthlessly, his eyes remaining predatory. Rodney conjured up the unwelcome mental image of a shark. A Great White. Funny that Sheppard kept trying to coax him into surfing, oblivious as ever of any danger or impending doom. Rodney had seen Jaws when it first came out, barfed out his popcorn all over the couple making out in the seats in front when the head rolled out of the submerged boat, whereupon he ducked behind his own seat, and scrabbled along the row to the nearest emergency exit, leaving his date behind. Pity, because Tiffany was the hottest natural platinum blonde in the history of blondes, and he'd already reached first base during the previews. He pursued her not quite so hot, slightly more gangly peroxide blonde twin sister some weeks later, Brittany, though for some reason she eyed him with disgust if not mild amusement, then went out with an ice hockey player named Biff McGraw-Rasmussen. Tiffany subsequently dated Biff's cousin, Barf - or was that Bart – who failed Algebra – I mean, Algebra! - come on! - thus reinforcing his own opinions and theories re deep versus shallow ends of the gene pool. He sought more cerebral types after that, though they were all still blondes.

Anyway, he had refused to set toe into any sea since nineteen seventy wheneveritwas. Plus Sheppard insisted on humming the theme music whenever they ventured near a body of water, even Atlantis's shores. Bastard was good at humming theme music, especially when it came to thrillers, but he somehow aced cartoons too. Even dumb old school stuff like Scooby Doo, Sheppard's little party piece along with Family Guy.

Between Jaws, Moby Dick, Indiana Jones, the dumb O'Roarke twins, the dumber McGraws, the dumberer Rasmussens, and Sheppard, Rodney's mind was a mess. Then he had a thought – if Sheppard wasn't afraid of sharks, then ipso facto he wasn't afraid of Kolya. Never was, never would be, and to bottom-line it – Kolya craved Sheppard's submission to him.

It was all so clear to him now. This was an intergalactic testosterone fest, pure and simple. They had been captured for no other reason. There was no treaty to broker, no supplies to trade for, no meet'n'greet, no exchange of intellectual ponderings or poetic musings, no Replicators to dispose of, no Wraith to thwart or slap with a large herring. This was revenge. And there had to be a connection between the Genii and the Damahii. The dumb, itchy-looking woolen uniforms at the height of summer should have given that away. Why had they not seen this coming? What were the linguists and anthropologists doing to earn their keep? Then again, maybe secret underground bunkers abounded among the Genii and their ilk.

"You are quite entertaining, Doctor McKay. I can practically see you thinking. As for any pain, it won't be yours, so why the concern?" Kolya frowned a mock frown.

"That's cold. It'd be Sheppard's pain. He didn't deserve what you did to him. He doesn't deserve any of – whatever it is you have in store for him either. You know that."

"Believe me, Doctor, he did and he does, after what he did to me. To my men. To my standing on my homeworld."

"John Sheppard is… my friend. The brother I never had… " He shouldn't have said that. He really shouldn't have said that. It just kind of tumbled out. And it was a stark truth he had just shared at quite the wrong moment and with quite the wrong nemesis.

"How touching. Come, let's find out how much of a friend or brother you are, and how much of a marksman. You are clearly not military, so this should be interesting. Entertaining, even. On with the show." Kolya grin dropped, and he fixed his gaze on two burly grunts. "Bring him."

"Wait! What about Short Round?"

Kolya was still gripping the little kid's arm. He looked down at it as if he wondered how it had ended up caught in his fist. It was a boy, apparently, though that was hard to tell, what with all the dirt, etcetera, etcetera. Could even have been one of those flying monkeys they once encountered. Of either gender.

"The beggar child? What kind of a name is Short Round? No matter. You never cease to amuse me. He remains here in the cell as collateral."

Kolya shoved the little flying monkey boy inside, and slammed the door shut. Short Round began to bawl, the sound of which reverberated throughout the cave. At that, Teyla snapped out of her fugue, looked wide-eyed at the boy, shot out an arm, wrapping it around his middle, drawing him close. The boy's tears soon began to abate, and he melted in her arms. He closed his eyes with the hint of a smile on his face, let out the occasional sob, and Teyla made soothing noises as she stroked his ratty, dark hair back from his pale face. She then drew him into Lola's waiting bosom. Her mothering instinct would be her salvation, her redemption. But - what of him?

...

The goons frog-marched Rodney deeper into the complex. The sharp incline and ever decreasing temperature told him he was heading to further depths, which meant without a doubt there was more nasty scary stuff ahoy. Maybe giant mutant moles. Well, that wasn't because of the incline per se, though that made him a tad reticent if not a tad dizzy. No, it was the slow onset of novel sound effects he'd rather block out but somehow couldn't bring himself to. Before long, he could hear groaning and snuffling coming from somewhere further into the gloom, and maybe – he strained his ears – somewhat towards his left. At around eleven o'clock.

Shit.

He knew that sound of old.

He'd know it anywhere.

He'd heard it far too many times over the years in the Pegasus Galaxy.

It emanated from Sheppard.

His cries and whimpers of pain and distress were as familiar to him as his wicked, carefree, infectious laughter if not more so, and for some reason, Rodney felt a melancholy. He couldn't quite remember when Sheppard had last belly-laughed uncontrollably, or had even smiled that irritating lop-sided grin of his. The last Sheppard grin he could remember was a sly one right after the Sekkari AI incident when Rodney realized he'd been duped into believing Zelenka et al had come back from an offworld mission because so-and-so had had an allergic reaction to such-and-such. So not the Sheppard he first met. Oh, of course he was as annoying as ever, and still knew how to get a rise out of him. He guessed some things never changed.

The goons shoved him into what could only be a torture chamber lit by a single bile-colored pendant lamp, and when he first caught sight of what was left of his best friend, he let out a girly shriek.

John was lying prone and shirtless, squirming, his hands scrabbling feebly against the concrete floor. There were some twenty to thirty raw, thin welts across his back from his left shoulder to his right flank. And there were thicker, raised and spongy-looking welts and bruises across the back of both legs and along his forearms and flanks.

Had Teyla participated in beating her own team leader? Whipping him? Strapping him? Rodney already knew the answer, knowing it had something to do with the rangy rugrat he'd had the gall to call Short Round, and promptly fain- passed out as he wondered how she could bring herself to do what she did.

The next thing Rodney knew, he was tied to a chair with one hand free. Well, not exactly free, as he'd somehow acquired a peculiar appendage. Strapped to his right hand was a gun not unlike Ronon's enormous stunner. Fancy that. Under other circumstances, it'd be way cool to finally get to fondle one.

Okay, scratch that.

Strung up before him, his arms pulled out sideways, was Sheppard. The man was pale, his head bowed, and he was tipped so far forward he could fully witness the state of his back. He was welted, bruised and bloody all over. Seriously? Teyla had done this to him? Their Teyla? Little wonder she was practically catatonic. John's legs were buckled, and he was trembling. Was that shock? Rodney's heart went out to him, and he let out a gasp of horror.

The strain on the man's arms and shoulders was painfully obvious. His muscles were bunched, and the skin on his shoulder blades was either blotchy or white, as if whatever blood remained had been forced to pool due to the stress position he had been left in. Rodney looked in horror at his steadily bleeding lacerations and the deep bruising, and nearly barfed up his last meal of prison gruel. So, pins and needles were the least of Sheppard's worries. Rodney desperately wanted to lift him down, ease his friend's suffering, but he was trapped. He was starting to get pins and needles himself in several very important places. This did not bode well if he wanted to sire offspring some day, though for some reason he was the butt of jokes on the subject, which he instantly put down to professional jealousy.

"John… "

Sheppard lifted his head, and looked up at him through glazed, half-closed eyes. His pain was palpable, even though he was mostly out of it. Then he flashed a grimace, which morphed into a frown as he struggled to his feet. Sheppard was as ever the stoical hero.

"Rod… "

"I'm not as cool as him. Am I? Ooh, I am!" Rodney perked up.

"..ney?"

"Oh, so not Rod then." He sank. "Okay, I'm rambling. Er, how are you? Dumb question, I know. As you're clearly not doing so great." Rodney squirmed. He found it hard to talk without the use of his hands. He elicited the help of his eyebrows and shoulders and even his knees and toes with either a twitch or a jerk.

"Guess'm not… doin' s'great. You… okay? How's… Tey – " Rodney's expression must've given something away along the lines of shock or even horror for John's head sank again. "'M sorry," he mumbled.

"You're sorry?!"

"My bad."

"I should be rescuing you!"

"Ro…non?"

"What, with us or rescuing us?"

"McKay! Please… Hard to - "

"Not with us. He's out there, John. On the loose." Rodney lied. He had no idea where Ronon was.

John raised his head, the glimmer of a smile on his battered face. "Stay p-pos… " and his head sank again. His legs were shaking, but at least he was upright, though Rodney had never seen arms and legs and torsos and necks or even fingers and toes look so tense and knotted before. Not that he even looked at or admired male bodies in general, and he subscribed to Playboy and not Playgirl, but still.

He had the strangest feeling at times that perhaps Sheppard might be slightly ahead of him in looks.

"Ah, Colonel Sheppard. You are with us once more. Glad you could join us. I want you awake for this." Kolya strutted around his bound and suspended victim.

"Y' know, Kolya, the villain thing... is getting old," Sheppard drawled, his head lolling on his chest. "You need some... new material."

Rodney rolled his eyes. Trust Sheppard.

Kolya placed his thumbs in his belt loops, but looked more amused than pissy. He turned to face Rodney. "Shoot him."

"Whuh?! You want me to do what now?!"

Kolya strode over, bent down, and shoved his pockmarked face into Rodney's. He could smell his fetid breath. Kolya must have been munching on the Pegasus equivalent of garlic. He suspected it might be that blerghy they'd recently traded boxes of dollar store bubble blower mix for.

"Shoot. Him."

"You're shitting me!"

Rodney eyed the Inspector Gadget gadget thingy strapped arch-nemesis-like to his right forearm. Under other circumstances, it would be way cool to fire one.

"Think only of the poor, starving, little doe-eyed orphan currently nestled peacefully in the arms of Miss Emmagan. You might also consider the fate of Miss Emmagan herself."

Rodney realized his lips were twitching.

John jerked his head up, and he glared at Kolya. John was furious, judging by the way his chest heaved. He struggled to get his feet under him.

Kolya threw a glance over at John, then looked, well, pleasantly surprised.

"I see how to get a rise from you, Colonel Sheppard. Threaten your friends. Or is it family? Waifs? Strays? The downtrodden? The oppressed? I suspect there is little need to suggest a similar fate might yet await the good doctor here. Bear in mind many of my men have been stationed here for almost a year lying in wait for you, and their sexual appetite knows no bounds. Teyla Emmagan, Doctor McKay and the beggar boy are all fair game. As are you. Despite your current condition. Or maybe even because of it. I might even leave you strung up with a spreader bar between your ankles."

"You bast… "

Kolya marched over to John, stood in front of him for a long moment, then slowly, painstakingly, donned a pair of leather gloves. John didn't, wouldn't or couldn't tear his gaze away, though his fixed, pained, slightly faraway expression told Rodney he knew what was coming in a 'been there, done that' kind of way. John looked sick to his stomach. It made Rodney wonder who precisely had beaten him with gloves on. And when. Maybe it was something to do with Afghanistan.

"Never speak ill of a Genii, Colonel Sheppard. You would do well to remember that. Allow me to demonstrate how to bow before every last one of us."

Kolya backhanded John several times. Blood dripped from his friend's mouth and nose onto the floor. John was moaning softly now, and his head jerked briefly. John spat blood on the floor, and raised his head high on a wobbly neck in a demonstration of his seemingly endless defiance. His face was badly grazed, and his right cheek was already a swollen mess. He blinked his right eye over and over again, and his eyelid finally drooped to half staff, then puffed up in almost imperceptible increments. A single tear trickled down his face. That was when Rodney wanted to pass out again. And not from manly hunger. Kolya grunted, and shook his hand out. He'd injured himself on John's angular bone structure. Hah. Small victory. Rodney let out a snort of derision.

"Concede!"

"Not gonna happ… 'n… so… you might as well… get this… over with…"

Kolya merely grinned momentarily, then set his face back to stern. He turned on Rodney. Uh oh.

"The gun you are holding contains seven capsules, Doctor McKay. Each capsule contains acid. I suggest you aim wisely. You could take an eye out with that thing." Kolya chuckled mirthlessly like a B-movie villain.

Rodney was released by some oddly handy goons, and hauled upright. He could barely stand. He was shaking from head to toe. Fire on John? Should he engage in rapid-fire and get it over with? Should he aim at uninjured spots on John's abused torso of which there were very, very few? Aim for his boxers, the only item of clothing the man was wearing yet which might provide a modicum of protection? His dog tags, which might deflect the bulk of the acid? He looked at John, his eyes full of apology.

"There's this little kid," he began, his voice quaking. "I called him Short Round. Is it okay I got to name something? I mean, someone? It's not like it's a puddle jumper or anything... big or major or consequential or galaxy-shattering or - "

Sheppard nodded.

"I could name him Rodney. Or not."

"Do it!" John growled, as he made brief eye contact, his body tense. Rodney guessed rampant fury was the only thing keeping John upright. Or alive.

Rodney raised the gun, and aimed. John nodded slowly. Then Rodney did the only thing he knew how. He turned away, scrunched up his eyes - and fired off all seven rounds.

The ensuing whimpers that morphed rapidly into full-blown screams which then cut off with a wheeze would haunt him forever. Oh, God. What had he done? Kolya's goons dragged him away, but he felt oddly detached from his body, like he was floating back to the cell, and not even the sense of going uphill rather than down helped him harbor any thoughts of entering the Pearly Gates with anything other than either a begrudged welcome or a reject stamp on his forehead. He had just caused untold agony for his best friend. How was this a vendetta? This was sheer torture. For all of them. And where the hell was Ronon?!


	5. Chapter 5

A/N - Just so's you all know, one review is generally indicative of one hundred readers. Yep, ff dot net gives us writers feedback, plus we confer with each other, too. The traffic stats tell all! The current trend seems to be ten reviews per chapter. To put it in further perspective, ten reviews corresponds to one thousand readers. Srsly! Not kidding! Not expecting thousands or even hundreds of reviews this late in the SGA fandom, since many fans have buggered off to whump McGarrett and the like - grr! - but to those of you who are reading and enjoying even old fics hereabouts, believe you me, we still appreciate those reviews and comments. It doesn't have to be anything clever or con crit, but although we know you're out there via the stats - *taps laptop screen* - and we even get breakdown by country re hits/visitors, it would be nice to hear from you direct. Even a winky emoticon would suffice. If you're shy, then PM us. We don't bite, although we might set something bitey on Sheppard, and yea, it shall have nasty, pointy teeth! XD

...

The crawling sensation of melting flesh down one side of his body was as nasty-assed as the crawling sensation of trickling blood, only it was agonizingly hot instead of at body temperature or cooler. The acid seared him like he'd been basted as if he were a still live fish on a barbecue turned up to high. He didn't think anything could hurt that bad.

Rodney had fired off the whole damn Bugsy Malone splurge gun in rapid succession, giving him no time to brace himself, reminding him of when Ronon pulled the rebar from his right flank without warning. The agony was as instant and as soul-consuming then as it was now, and it ripped a scream from his throat, then a whooping intake of breath, then another scream, then another whooping intake. He must've screamed himself hoarse, because now when he tried to speak, no sound came out. He was close to begging the guards for water. Throw another pail over him. Anything to quench his thirst, or to dull the agony if only for one blessed moment.

The entire gunky payload had hit him in his right bicep, slamming his entire right side back against the wall – was there some unwritten rule about symmetrical scars in this damn galaxy? The acid had dripped onto his chest and his right flank. He could feel it drizzling down, re-igniting the agony of one still tender impalement scar, then trickling down to his hip to his thigh then his ankle, thankfully bypassing anything more, uh – vital... He seriously had to be grateful Rodney had missed his eyes and his nuts since he clearly fired wild. Yep, same old. He really needed to up the ante on the geek firearm training. It would be at the top of his agenda if he ever made it home.

Home. Atlantis. He could feel her even from this distance, her cries of anguish reaching far across the galaxy.

Family. Teyla, Rodney, Ronon. John loved them all, and would die for any one of them. Even though they were hurting him.

Friends – he got friends. Loads. They just mostly happened to be dead. And John suspected he was about to join them.

He squirmed. Just a little. It started up a whole new barrage of pain, but he had to move, keep what was left of his blood flowing. Prove to himself he wasn't just a hanging joint of meat ready for carving.

It was growing cold. Or maybe Kolya had deliberately turned down the heating on him. Kolya wanted him to die slowly after all. Hah, his plan was working, that much was a dead cert. John reckoned he didn't have much time left. At least – if Kolya kept his word - Teyla and Rodney would get to go home along with the kid, and with any luck, take his cold, dead, broken body with them. He wanted to be entombed on Atlantis. Which brought him back to... home. He was back to home.

John was losing it. His mind was running some crazy cycle like a washing machine on speed.

Dial.

Speed dial.

Still, he got loads of friends.

Washloads.

Something was off kilter, making the loose drum inside his head rattle like an overload of towels on spin. What? What was it? Was there something he was missing? His one-shot at freedom?! Gah!

John shook his head to clear his thoughts, and then it occurred to him. Ronon. Ronon hadn't done anything to him yet. He had to hope. Stay positive, that his good buddy had escaped, gone for back-up.

There was nothing else left him, not even his body, his outer casing. The heat cranked up. Maybe his motor was on burnout. Time for an overhaul.

John shifted position, and another scream rose in his throat, but nothing came out of his mouth beyond a sick, half-assed wheeze. He looked up and around, anything to gain some equilibrium, and spied Ronon just standing in front of him, a snarling, seething blob of anger. Ronon's blood, commingled with sweat, dripped all over the floor. And Ronon was about to hurt him. Badly. It was all too much. John pulled the plug, switching himself off.

...

"Got caught."

Ronon offered that much to Sheppard but got no response. His CO and good buddy just hung there, lifeless. He couldn't believe his own stupidity. A stun bubble? This far down an abandoned Wraith outpost? Yeah, because that's what it was. He'd seen the facility from the outside while he scouted for weapons. Wraith design, Wraith tech. Maybe it was being powered by a ZPM, and they could swoop it, make this mission turn out not to be a bust. If they all made it home alive. So much for beans.

He must be off his game. Captured by Kolya and his merry men. It sucked ass. They'd left a cache of useless weapons for him to find, covered in camo, low-lying, barely discernible from the landscape, but his sharp eyes had spied it from a distance, and he'd fallen for the decoy, gotten himself ambushed. He'd approached cautiously, lifted a canvas edge, and Kolya's men had lept out from under some fake bushes. Under, not behind - they'd buried themselves in the dirt.

It took all twenty of them to take him down, using nets and darts and bludgeons. He'd faked being unconscious, let them haul him away, leaving him entangled in the net while they wassailed around a camp fire. Idiots. He'd chopped and slashed himself free using one of the knives he kept tucked under his wrist guard, only to be taken down by a stun bubble deep inside the facility. So here he was deep underground surrounded by armed Genii renegades, standing before an unconscious, badly beaten Sheppard and with his back turned on Teyla, Rodney and some ragged little kid.

"Mr Dex. So glad you could join us. I'm sure Colonel Sheppard will be equally delighted."

"Uh… "

"No need to articulate, Mr Dex. I happen to know you are a current member of the colonel's team, and as such, you shall be complicit in his demise."

"Whuh?"

"You get to help kill him."

"Don't think so."

"Really? Look behind you, if you would be so kind."

Ronon obliged by swinging his upper body left then right, pivoting on his hips, leaving his legs in place. That way, he could do a sweep, but still be ready to charge into the fray.

"So?"

"These are your friends, are they not? Your teammates?"

"Nah. Just some freedom fighters I hooked up with. Do it all the time. Pick 'em up. Drop 'em. Use 'em. No big deal." Ronon shrugged.

"No matter." Kolya stared at him long and hard, then broke into a feral grin.

Ronon was squirming inwardly. He struggled to keep his face as inscrutable as ever. Sheppard's life was at stake. As was Teyla's and McKay's and the kid's. Sheppard called it his action hero poker face. What the look on his face had to do with pokers was something he'd have to ask him someday during some down time, maybe over a hot chocolate in the mess, though it wasn't high on his list of priorities, plus it involved talking, which he generally didn't do.

Right now, Teyla and McKay were manacled to a pole each. Some scrawny little kid was shackled to one. He was curled up on the floor, snuggling up to if not tangled up in Teyla's tank top, sucking his thumb. The kid looked like he still had some life in him, but Ronon reckoned that wouldn't last long. He was stick thin, like he'd been made of twigs wrapped in rags.

Time to suss out his odds of breaking them all free. They weren't great, but he'd take what he could. Ronon snarled as he watched Kolya prance up and down. Then tempered his ire. Time enough to kick ass.

"Whaddya want from me?" He found himself shuffling on the spot. And watching Sheppard for signs of life. Ronon breathed a sigh of relief as Sheppard stirred, and struggled to anchor his bare feet against the floor, lock his knees to keep himself upright. He failed on both counts, and slumped once more. The man was trembling from head to toe. He raised his head on a wobbly neck, and clearly fought to open his eyes. Sheppard blinked a few times, then rested his unfocused gaze on him, managing a grin.

"Ro… n?"

"Yeah, buddy."

"T'l'r'ney?"

"They're good. Quit talking."

"On.. it… "

"So, Mr Dex, now you have elicited a modicum of complicity – now you 'got your buddy to go along with you' – I suggest you listen very carefully indeed."

"Gonna… self-dest… self-destruct… in five… s-s… "

"Shut up, Sheppard."

"H-Hoist… "

"Hoist?"

"With his… own… petard."

"That better mean 'strung up by the balls', Sheppard."

"Hah! Kinda. Sh-Shakespeare. Ham. Hamlet."

"Sheppard. You're not making sense. This is no backwater hamlet. It's an old Wraith outpost turned into a Genii secret underground bunker. Snap out of it."

"Sure. Thinnngg… Aagh… "

"Quit writhing, too."

"Hnngh… "

And Sheppard hung loosely once more.

"Does he live or does he die? Remember, Mr Dex, this all plays out per your sense of decency. And mine."

"Screw you, Kolya."

Kolya circumnavigated him. It took all his willpower not to beat the crap out of him or even flinch, or rush to check Sheppard's pulse. His buddy looked dead. Since nearly all his knives had been confiscated, and he'd been overpowered twenty to one, Ronon was short of options. Ten to one would have been decent odds.

Ronon stood stock still. He knew what was coming next. He could tell by the way the former Genii commander was eyeing him up. A challenge.

"Mr Dex, what say you we wager?" Kolya raised a bushy eyebrow.

"What's the deal?" Ronon folded his arms, and threw all his weight onto one leg. He needed to look nonchalant, like he hadn't much to lose.

"You cast every single one of these seventeen knives we found upon your person. At Colonel Sheppard. To within a finger-breadth of his flesh. Too far out, and you forfeit his life. You hit him – and we all revel in his blood-curdling screams. You win, and Colonel Sheppard lives. You lose, and you go home with a body to bury or cast out to sea, but you get to take these three wastrels with you. Yes, I'll even throw in the brat. Do we have a deal? There shall, of course, be minor obstacles, but nothing you cannot potentially overcome. Do we have a deal?"

Ronon looked over at John Sheppard, the man who had given him a second chance, the man who had become his friend. His brother.

"I asked you a simple question, Mr Dex, involving a mere five syllables. Do. We. Have. A deal?"

"Deal," he growled.

"Then remove your restrictive clothing, Mr Dex."

Ronon stripped himself off from his leather outerwear without further ado. He stood four-square in nothing but a loincloth. Good thing the rest of his knives were tucked into his dreads. He shook out his arms in prep, and bounced on his feet, jogging on the spot.

"Hang in there, buddy." Ronon thought out loud.

"Whuh? 'M'hangin'..." Sheppard tutted, lifted his head briefly, and rolled his eyes.

"Ronon here. John. Gotta ask you to quit squirming. Just keep still. Count to one hundred, buddy. Getting you outta here." When did he start calling him John?

"Good… t' knowww…. Ronon? Buddy? Thanks. For tryin'… Th'nks f'r everyth'nngg… 'S'been… a pleasure."

"Gah! Stay with me, Sheppard!"

Sheppard was about to quit on him! Ronon charged up and down, fuming, slapping his own face, and pummeling his chest. It wouldn't help Sheppard, but if nothing else, it would keep him reasonably alert for whatever trial lay ahead.

Ronon glanced left and right. Then front and back. He even checked overhead. Before him lay his vast array of throw knives on a small table. Kolya had ordered Sheppard restrained against a target. The fucking bastard had determined a finger-breadth leeway, if the thin red paint line around Sheppard's body were anything to go by. With only a pass/fail.

Sheppard looked pathetic enough to rival the culling orphan all tangled up in Teyla's arms. Ronon turned around to glance at the boy, turned back, whereupon Sheppard nodded slowly. There were times when he wanted to beat his sorry ass, and declare to him how much he… how much he was… important. In every respect. Mostly he wanted to give him a bear hug. Whatever a bear was. It sounded pretty much like the extinct Satedan worrohgug only with fur instead of feathers.

"Mr Dex!"

Ronon threw knife after knife in ten seconds flat. Then came the onslaught. Something like Teyla's bantos sticks being thwacked against his back! His arms! His thighs! What the? It stung like a bitch. Ronon turned to face his tormentors, somehow refraining from breaking their necks.

"Mr Dex. You have successfully thrown ten knives without even giving Colonel Sheppard a close shave. For your final seven throws, you must compensate."

"For what?"

"Why, for the distraction you just experienced. Courtesy of my loyal guard. Four of them. And each shall be wielding a stave. For each of your last seven throws."

...

John heard a steady whooshing sound. He had to lift his head. He had to. Each miserable fraction of an inch caused him a multitude of throbs and stings. Ronon was out there. Ronon. His good buddy. He tried to bring his legs under him, but he no longer possessed limbs. Who took his legs? When did they amputate his arms?

Something skimmed his left ear. Ronon? He willed Ronon to forgive him. For not keeping them all safe. To maybe take his body home. Then something struck his left shoulder. He heard Ronon cry out in anguish.

John shrugged to rid himself of Ronon's knife currently embedded in his flesh, to stay the hell awake, and did a quick shimmy to increase blood flow to his extremities. Yep, still there. He barely suppressed a scream as blood rushed back into his restrained arms and legs. There were no more knives coming his way. The one that struck him was the last of them. John forced himself to stand, forced himself to bear testimony to the integrity and fortitude of Atlantis. He represented Atlantis, who was still keening in his ear. He prayed she wouldn't have to mourn him.

As best he could while still restrained, John Sheppard stood tall and proud. The knife embedded in his shoulder clattered to the floor.

"You win, Mr Dex. I shall honor our arrangement."

"You have no honor, Kolya."

Whuh? John could scarcely believe it. His ordeal was over. He was finally released from his bonds, and he slumped to the floor. He heard the clanking of chains and the patter of bare feet, Hands were all over him within seconds, but he was too weak to slap them away. He had no energy to even open his eyes, let alone fight back. He had to admit he was pretty much half dead. Then they laid him out on his back on a cold slab like a fish ready for gutting. He could feel the chains being tugged off his wrists and ankles, then hitting the floor with a thud. He wanted to test movement in his limbs, shake out the pins and needles, but they refused to respond. He heard voices. Someone had turned down the bass. Good thing, since his head was providing it, thudding along with his rapid heartbeat.

"You may take him. And the boy."

_Kolya?_

"Which way should we put him on the stretcher? Front or back? What do we do? I dunno what to do!"

"Doesn't matter."

"Perhaps on his front, since... "

"You are quite right, Rodney. I believe we should place him on is front. First we must protect his injuries. Commander Kolya? Would you please give us some bandages?"

_Suck-up._

"We don't have time for this."

_Stun me then. It never gets old. Stun me! It never gets old! It never gets old!_

"His shoulder is bleeding profusely, Ronon. John does not need to lose any more blood."

"I suggest we take that dastardly smirk as an ixnay on the bandages. At least his back isn't bleeding any more. Looks weepy though. Raw. Like a piece of meat. And his left shoulder blade looks like pile of tinned cat food."

"Rodney!"

_TMI, McKay._

John felt himself being lifted by his underarms and the backs of his knees, turned over, one limb at a time, somehow dragging the rest of his body with, and settled back down again on his belly. Home. He was going home. John sighed with relief. He could let go now. Usually he fought the bed spins, and roaring white noise which drowned out voices - he thought he could hear someone ranting and raving about voodoo and more torture ahoy - but this time he allowed the side effects of a drunken bender to whisk him into blessed oblivion. Whether he awoke in a pool of his own vomit and the hangover from Hell was anybody's guess. But - he only ever drank Bud or ruus wine. In moderation. He knew his limits. What was happening here? And what was that about more torture in his future? He knew right then and there that there was no way he could take any more.

_Please, d-don't!_

He thought he could hear Kolya hiss in his ear.

"Yesss!"

_ Nooo!_ he cried in his head._ Nooo..._

...

A/N - yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the singular is biceps, but no-one uses it that way outside the medical field, so I'm calling it a bicep.


	6. Chapter 6

Bonus chapter for a lovely guest reviewer! Francene - I wish I could reply to you through other means! I really do. I'm thinking this is the only way. It's the only means at my disposal just now. And btw, guest reviews take longer to turn up, so please don't feel put out, anyone. FYI, after this I can only post every other week, though I will try to get down to once a week. Thank you for your continued support! And that goes for everyone who's left a review or comment. They mean a lot. No, srsly, it's how we get paid! :P

...

Peter Kavanagh just so happened to be skulking out of Woolsey's office after a totally uncalled-for bitching out that rivaled one of Weir's little hissyfit tirades, when that Chet or Chuckie or Chaz guy announced an unscheduled offworld activation in his usual irritating TV announcer slash commercialese voice. Chaz then declared it was Teyla's IDC. Woolsey shot Peter a parting schoolmarmish glare as he ordered Chaz to lower the shield. Peter flashed his best 'bite me' grin in return.

And so it was that a bruised, battered and filthy Teyla Emmagan hurtled through the gate first, clutching some wriggling, ratty-looking bundle to her ample bosom, nodded grimly yet knowingly towards Woolsey, and dashed towards the infirmary. It was funny how Woolsey finally looked ruffled.

The hulking Neanderthal torturer wannabe emerged next, gripping the front of a stretcher carrying some half-naked, inert and bloodied body lying face down. Sheppard. Who else had sissy designer hair like that? Though it looked even spikier than usual. Sheppard must've been too busy preening himself in his shaving mirror offworld to see the bad guys coming.

Then McKay emerged, wearing rags several sizes too big. He was struggling to maintain his grip on the ass end of the stretcher and keep his baggy, beltless pants hitched up at the same time. Priceless!

Peter ran down the stairway to do some rubber-necking along with half the civilian expedition, who swarmed in from every access like rats invading a sinking ship rather than deserting it. He hoped for dead, but sadly, Sheppard only appeared half dead since the man had a white-knuckle grip on the bars of the stretcher. He'd been severely beaten by the looks. Yep, blue and purple bruises and huge, raised red welts discolored his entire back half from the nape of his neck right down to his ass. Peter suppressed a snort. And were those burn marks on his arm and sides? Right down the side of one leg? Whip marks? Strap marks? The presenting side of his face was swollen. Even the backs of his legs looked battered. Looked like he'd been thoroughly tortured. Kewl!

He suppressed a snicker as the Neanderthal stumbled then faceplanted, and six grunts rushed forward - four to grab Dex and two to grab a stretcher handle each, easing both Hulk and stretcher to the ground in sync. McKay somehow had the sense to lower his end in tandem, then sat down on the floor, head in hands. The man was shaking and sniffling like a girlie. This was all too hilarious. Where was his digital camera when he needed it?

He watched, enthralled, as Carson plus his medical minions burst onto the scene, and tried to prise the wreck that was Sheppard off the downed stretcher then onto a gurney. They couldn't. He was most likely glued in place by icky sticky blood. It would be like ripping off a giant band-aid. Talk about gross.

Peter waited for the scream, but it never came. Sheppard's hands released their grip on the stretcher bars, and hung loose. After some head scratching, they opted for dropping the stretcher with Sheppard still on it onto the gurney. They tucked Sheppard's dangling arms back on the stretcher, and whizzed him off to the infirmary. His remaining teammates appeared to rally at that point, with Dex fighting off medics, telling them he was good, and even raising his ham fist to them, whereupon they backed off. Peter remembered that fist coming at him, and nightmares still haunted him to this day. Bastard.

_His uppance shall come,_ he thought to himself.

Dex hauled himself upright, and staggered over to a miserable looking McKay, crouched over him, pulled him onto wobbly legs, then dragged him by his shirt sleeve, whereupon his pants fell down about his knees. McKay yanked them up with a yelp, bunched them up by the waistband, and they both caught up with the retreating gurney, Dex striding like a spooked giraffe, and McKay wobbling like a hopped-up penguin.

Peter followed. The sight of them both flanking Sheppard, fawning and fussing like he was something super-duper and extra-special, made him want to hurl. Anyone with any sense knew he was nothing but a dumb flyboy with fancy genes who liked to play hero, and who jeopardized the expedition far more often than he contributed to it. Like Weir. Well, Weir was gone now. If only he could get rid of Sheppard, his joy would know no bounds.

"What have we done?" McKay's voice sounded tremulous as he twisted the waistband of his baggy pants like some pathetic kindergartner who'd pissed himself even though he had already been potty trained so really should have known better. McKay reduced to this. This was getting better and better. Peter patted his pants pocket for that elusive camera.

So... guilt? How intriguing. Dex glared at McKay, and told him to shut his mouth, then looked about him furtively. Peter decided then and there to pay a visit to the infirmary to get the dope on what went down on their supposed cakewalk mission. Or was that a beanwalk. He needed a sound excuse. He settled on constipation. Peter practiced a pained expression. Well, an even more pained one than usual.

...

"Where's Doctor Beckett? I want to see Doctor Beckett, not Doogie Howser's kid sister."

Keller had the decency to blush as she ushered him onto a gurney. It was a disgrace. He'd been waiting for nearly an hour now. Fuck triage.

"Doctor Kavanagh – Doctor Becket is in surgery trying to save a life. You'll just have to make do with me."

"Huh. So, some mindless jarhead injured in the line of duty?"

"Actually it's Colonel Sheppard." She scrunched up her face like she needed to take a dump.

Kavanagh feigned concern. "Oh dear, what happened this time?"

"He's been tor- injured," she whispered, then looked around sheepishly. "I can tell you nothing further. Sorry. Anyway, what brings you here today?"

"A blockage in the works."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm clogged up."

"Come again?"

"Constipation!" he growled.

"Oh. I see. Well, erm, let me check you over to make sure it's nothing more serious, and if that's all it is, I'll send you off with meds and some dietary advice. I'd be pleased if that's all it is. As you can see, we're rather busy in here. Hop up onto the bed."

Score!

"Who all's here?" Peter looked about him innocently. Like he didn't already know. Teyla was sitting up in bed, being cajoled rather than treated. He spotted the same ratty thing she'd been clutching was actually a scrawny kid of maybe four or five. It was curled up asleep in a bed butted up next to hers, looking all contented like a pampered show quality cat even though it looked more like a mangy, flea-bitten stray. Looked like it was connected to IVs and feeding tubes. Some nurses were still trying to convince Ronon to have his bruises looked at, but received a snarl in return, whereupon they lobbed him some ice packs, and scuttled off. McKay was busy looking dazed, as he sat there, nursing a tub of blue Jell-O.

Peter decided he'd missed his vocation; he should have been a detective. A spy. This was fun! Even more hilarious was the snippets of conversation from the nurses that added up to the fact that Sheppard had had to be pretty much soaked off the stretcher he arrived on.

His fun was short-lived when he was sent packing with a week's supply of suppositories. Just when things were getting interesting. He could hear Sheppard crying out, begging someone to stop, mumbling something about letting his team go, probably as he was coming to after surgery. Of course said team instantly rallied, startling first, then staggering or crawling to his post-op bedside on the other side of the swinging doors. It was positively disgusting. Sycophantic.

Peter thought of his own so-called team. Not one of them would give a damn if he lived or died. He had no real friends, just colleagues, acquaintances and chess opponents. And that, of course, suited him just fine.

Peter was jerked out of his musings when Keller made some perfunctory attempt at palpating his abdomen, then grabbed a blister pack from one of her unlocked cabinets, and waved him away. He hopped off the gurney, but pretended to stumble.

Nope, no-one bothered to come to his rescue. He eyed the pack in disdain. Suppositories. Well she could shove em up her own ass. He tossed them in the nearest trash can on his way out, hoping the racket he made was telling enough, and that it was enough to wake the dead as well as the sick.

...

Peter despaired of there ever being any fun around here as he padded along the dismal, empty halls of a semi-dormant Atlantis late one evening. Nearly a month had gone by since the latest excitement in the gateroom. Woolsey, the chicken, had recalled all offworld teams after Sheppard's little torture session, and hadn't sent any more out while he reassessed their intel if not their priorities. Life on Atlantis had become dull, and beans were off the menu pretty much to everyone's delight until dehydrated, flavor-free soy products became a staple, and suddenly everything on the menu was faux this and faux that.

The Daedalus made a pit stop, and its cowardly crew took advantage of a lengthy furlough, the kitchen staff created faux duck a l'orange and faux fillet mignon amongst other bizarre dishes like it was some TV chef challenge, though the stuff tasted like they'd thrown away the actual food and gussied up the packaging - and then there was the Atlantis/Daedalus chess tourney.

He was feeling totally pissed off after an early knockout. Bunch of cheaters. Even an hour or so later, he was still too wired to hit the sack, and as the various piers and balconies offered only so many cheapo crappo touristy vistas even under the full moons, he'd decided to raid himself a midnight snack, like maybe some microwave popcorn so long as it wasn't faux, and maybe even catch a movie all by his lonesome as ever.

The movie sucked, and he vowed to email some reprimand concerning whoever requisitioned crap DVDs from home amongst other equally valid complaints such as the soy products meant to provide protein in the absence of beans. As he neared a transporter some ninety sans commercial minutes later, he spotted the silhouette of a staggering drunk, a half-naked one at that if his night vision wasn't playing him up.

Peter loved drunks of old. Taunting ragged, filthy, homeless winos in the dingy back alleys of his hometown was pretty much once a fave hobby of his. He remembered how the soup kitchen lines were often longer than the movie theater lines during any one of the endless parades of 'recessions'. He'd often gotten his kicks berating those losers for not getting a proper job, but his charitable instinct occasionally kicked in, and he'd toss them a few quarters, laughing as they scrambled to pick them up, clearly affected by their double vision and not really knowing which coin to chase after. Well, the odds were fifty-fifty. Ish. Some quarters ended up in doggy do, which was hilarious, others rolled along the gutter like in a bowling alley, only to end up down the drains. He really didn't care. He just liked toying with winos, watching them fumble around the pavement and sidewalks for a coin. Storm drains often won out. As did the doggy do.

Served them right. He even knew some of these down-and-outs. Mindless jocks who hadn't bothered to study or get themselves a decent trade, thinking they owned it, would win that football scholarship with very little practice, and who had often beat him up and guys like him in high school for being a geek or a nerd or a wimp. He'd perfected the art of passing out before a pummeling, so mostly got to totally harsh their buzz. Back then he wished he could beam out like on Star Trek. Little did they know.

He'd shot up during his senior year, though he hadn't exactly buffed out per se, attended a local community college, found his bliss, and had gone on to a pretty decent university where he'd shone, emerging with an honors degree, which led to a post grad course which led to… well, he'd have to read his own resume to work out how the fuck he'd ended up in the Pegasus Galaxy.

Some of his peers had even dropped out at high school level, and their lives had gone from being buff jocks who always got the girl – okay, ditzy cheerleader - to vermin, pure and simple. As their looks faded and their muscles turned from bricks to mash potatoes and their beer bellies hung over their belts and their hairlines receded and their job prospects dwindled, a bunch of them had fallen on hard times, their current female partners of choice being whores or frumpy single moms with endless snot-nosed brats spawned by different fathers.

He held no sympathy. He might have fallen off their collective radar some time back, but there was no forgive and forget. Some of them even recognized him, their eyes flickering with hope and recognition, calling him their good buddy and wishing him well. No hard feelings? How about a drink for old time's sake? He'd rather spit on them, but success in his career was revenge enough, that and stepping into his metallic blue/green color-shift Hummer right before their rheumy, bloodshot eyes, and spongy, red noses, their expressions incredulous; envious.

_Yeah, I made it and you fuckers didn't._

After flipping that quarter into the gutter, Peter would head to his three-bed colonial in a gated community in the posh 'burbs, a smug grin on his face the entire ride as he listened to his fave boy band cassettes. Yep, the best form of revenge was massive success, all right. But that was before he had been assigned to Atlantis, where jocks posing as the Proud and the Few (or the Lame and Infirm or whatever the hell it was) re-emerged in a different guise, and were out to get him once more. Deja vu. He hated them of old. Their success here pissed him off, especially the ones that rose in the ranks, and some of them even got the girl. The pretty ones. Several times over. Especially Colonel Sheppard, who always seemed to snag the stunning supermodel alien princess with come-to-bed eyes, an hourglass figure and legs up to her armpits. The bastard had kept his good looks, his physique, even his hair. On the Kavanagh scale of winners to losers, jocks were meant to end up at the bottom of the heap or be sent off as cannon fodder. Not Sheppard. He rose above them all, earning respect and adulation, adored by grunts and civvies alike. He was both a man's man and a woman's man, and Peter hated him for it.

Peter was glad Sheppard had been tortured about a month ago. That lying bitch Keller said he'd been injured, but the injuries were deliberate. Accidental whip and strap marks? Acid burns? Stabbings? Yeah, right. So, definitely torture then. Rumor had it it was by his own team. If only Peter had come up with appendicitis rather than constipation as his excuse to be treated in the infirmary, he might have sleuthed more juicy details. Better luck next time. Last he heard, the colonel was still weak and sore and now he was sick from some bacterial infection that had attacked his lungs, like pneumonia or something, and that his team was publicly acting completely out of character. Teyla and Dex both looked constantly hangdog, generally avoiding eye contact according to the water cooler talk, and McKay was just plain silent. So, the rumor was most likely true. Peter smirked.

Peter was often overlooked for promotion, shuffled from pillar to post, from one dreary assignment to another. Atlantis. Daedalus. SGC. Daedalus. Atlantis. It made him hate Sheppard all the more. There were a handful of Atlantis personnel he'd like to kick to the curb. Weir had had the decency to crawl away and die, but the chance of that happening to all his sworn enemies was minimal

Peter crept up on the drunken jarhead, who was clutching the wall with both hands, clearly struggling not to fall over in an alcoholic stupor. This being Atlantis, he could do with a few brownie points, ingratiate himself with Woolsey for a change, and a few other key personnel by hauling the dumb bastard off to the infirmary before he choked on his own vomit right in front of him, and then he'd have to write up an incident report, which would be a total drag. Then he recognized the wobbly silhouette. Adrenalin gave him a short, sharp invigorating shock from head to toe, and his thoughts took a vastly different turn. He found himself instantly plotting and planning.

The drunk was one unsteady, bleary-eyed, half-naked John Sheppard. The colonel sported nothing more than a pair of stripy boxers. Not even his dog tags or that dumb macho wristband of his. Well, whaddya know. Peter once again wished he'd had his digital camera with him. That would have been a sweet post on the Atlantis intranet.

Peter glanced around. The halls were still empty despite the extra personnel, and dimly lit. A fleeting moment of fear caused him to imagine himself leaping out of a centerpiece cake in a neon tutu under a spotlight before a full house of party goers. He scanned for security cameras. Nope, none that he could detect. He'd amputated his pony some months ago, so there was no chance of any tell-tale recognition in any recorded footage, plus he was wearing a generic tee shirt and standard issue pajama pants. No Daedalus identification. He was pretty much plain and nondescript, truth be told. Blah out the wazoo. Story of his life.

There would be no trace of anything that could link him to his next course of action, whatever it might be. He could always beetle away if any alarms went off, but so far, seems the infirmary staff hadn't realized they had an escapee. Probably the night nurse was sleeping on the job or busy screwing someone in a broom closet. If he could just come up with a plan to get back at Sheppard.

The man was pale and sweaty, his cheeks flushed, and he was wheezing. So, he really was still sick and injured after his little fracas with the Teammates from Hell. The fool was delirious – and ripe for the picking. Yeppers, this was opportunism at its best.

Peter slapped on his best chummy expression, forcing a modicum of empathy in his eyes. He patted his pajama pocket. His cuddly, pen-sized, super-duper beaming device was there as ever. He was never without it, not since he'd stumbled upon an uncatalogued one at the SGC, and had swiped it, tucking it down his shirt front and walking away as nonchalantly as possible. It was his security, especially since nearly being tortured by that hulking Satedan for something he actually didn't even do. Oh, the irony. He would have activated the thing back then, but by then he was just too damn good at genuinely passing out cold. In any case, it needed to be periodically recalibrated and the co-ordinates re-set. No time for that during an emergency. He'd missed out then, but he wouldn't miss out now. He was good to go.

Peter dashed up to Sheppard, and grabbed an arm just as he was about to slide down the wall.  
"Great to see you, Sir. You okay?"  
"Whuh? Gotta get away! From Kolya! And his cronies. You… not one of them." Sheppard grabbed him by the front of his tee, and shook him, scanning his face earnestly. "I – I got out. They waterboarded me. They even... attached... electrodes to me. Catheters. I think they were... planning on... administering electric shocks... after dousing me... with water."

Yep, that'd be the infirmary for you. Other than that – waterboarding? No, you have lingering pneumonia, you fucking idiot. That's why you're gasping for breath. Duh! Peter felt emboldened now. If caught, he could pretend he was helping him, his word against a delusional Sheppard's.

"Who are you? How'dya find me?"  
"Daedalus, Sir. Name's Smith. Life signs detector."  
"No. Cut it out. With a scalpel. Flushed it." Sheppard let go of him, and poked at an open wound on his own upper left arm, then slid further down the wall, ending up on all fours.  
Peter grimaced in disgust as a trail of blood trickled down Sheppard's upper arm to his fingers, then dripped onto the floor. He did that to himself? Sicko.  
"Can you fly, Sir? I think I saw a jumper."  
"You said… Daedalus… "  
"Can't beam us out, Sir. Signal jammed."  
"Crap." Sheppard listed, gave up his last stand against gravity, and faceplanted, ending up looking all shmushed on the floor. Kavanagh got a good look at his back, and nearly barfed.  
"Sorry we can't email ourselves, Sir. Gotta go the snail mail route." He tossed in a chuckle for good measure. "Come on, Sir. Let's get you back to the real Atlantis." Peter bent down to Sheppard's level, and patted his bare sweaty shoulder in a gesture of appeasement. He wished he'd had some hand sanitizer in his pocket. He wiped his hand on his tee.

"What did they do to you, Sir?" Like he cared.  
"They drugged me, made me… sick. Fake team. Fake infirmary. I'm… hallucinating." Sheppard pushed himself onto his side, and frowned. "S-Something doesn't add up here. No... LSD... I… know you. They'd never... send you. Not you. You can't be here!"  
Sheppard scrabbled away from him back along the wall, and gripped it as if for dear life. Damn. Think, Kavanagh! He crouched next to him.  
"I'm undercover! They'd never suspect _me!_ Right?" That ought do it, he thought.  
"Makes sense."  
Bastard…  
Sheppard was scowling, pouting, trying to figure all this out. He was breathing rapidly, making dumb little grunting noises with every hard-won breath. Peter clenched his teeth in irritation, and angrily dug his nails into the man's bare skin as he struggled to prop him up, staring into his face, feeling more like Gollum sucking up to Frodo Baggins. He wanted the stoical heroic idiot a-hole to quit his incessant wheezing and whining, as he really didn't give a damn if the man was hurting or not. Plus the bastard was dissing him.

He tried hauling up the man's sorry carcass, but couldn't find purchase on a non-sweaty part of his body, and he had no desire to touch those boxers. They were sweat-drenched and see-through, sticking to his ass and crotch, revealing all. Bleugh. He'd have to go scrub his eyeballs and braincell in bleach after seeing that sorry array. And Sheppard was bigger than him in that department. Now that seriously pissed him off.

Sheppard was clearly very sick and weak and delusional, not drunk. Ah, so what. He grabbed him by his forearms. There were restraint marks around his wrists from his latest fuck-up mission. He could work with this, and have himself some fun at the same time. At Sheppard's expense.  
"Sheppard! Look at your wrists! They're abraded. They restrained you, Sheppard. They tortured you! Kolya did this! Your team did this!" Yep, he'd heard over and over again on the grapevine how that Kolya had made Teyla, McKay and Dex torture their team leader for no reason other than revenge, then had simply let them all go, alongside some miserable whiney brat they'd rescued, who apparently just today had ended up on the mainland in the doting arms of some childless Athosian couple, close kin to that pious oaf Halling. All nicely prettied up and fattened up and disgustingly healthy. Apart from that saccharine happily ever after, Kolya was definitely after his own heart.  
Sheppard lifted his clawed, shaking hands up to his face. His eyes went wide. Sheppard began to hyperventilate. It was like taking candy from a baby. Payback. Peter pressed on.  
"They're coming, Sir! They're after the IDC for Atlantis! I know you can resist, but I can't! I – have a low threshold for pain! We gotta get outta here!"

Sheppard scanned him for a long moment, his eyes blazing with fever, and Peter offered his most sincere, earnest expression to date. He was gaining the fool's trust. Peter suppressed a smirk.  
"I know you," Sheppard ground out.  
"Daedalus, Sir. Remember? Smith. Special ops."  
Sheppard gasped. Something appeared to ring a bell with him. Was it special ops? All righty then. Sheppard took in a deep, rattling breath, steeling himself as he squatted against the wall. Then he coughed, practically choking on his own loogies. Peter gagged at that, then tugged his arm.  
"Not far from here, Sir. Let me support you. Jumper's not far."  
"I can't remember… what happened. Why can't I remember? Where's my team?"  
"They tried to extract information from you, sir, but it must've wiped some memories. That or you're suppressing them so the bad guys can't extract the IDC."  
"Don't know my own name. You Smith? Who'm I again?"  
"Shep- Uh, Jones. Lieutenant Colonel Jones." Peter winced.

"Jones? Wait! No, no IDC this time. It was a revenge thing. Kol- "

Sheppard's eyes rolled, and he slumped once more. Damn the man. He could at least move his own sorry ass. Sure, he'd been badly beaten – by his own teammates – and had been delivered back to Atlantis thoroughly battered. He could see the marks on his back in glorious Technicolor, some raw-looking burn marks on one arm and down one side, and he still sported mostly yellow bruising with dashes of green pretty much all over. Sheppard had succumbed to some post-injury fever, and had finally somehow escaped the infirmary only to wander the hallways in a deluded state. Stealthy bastard. Apparently the infirmary staff hadn't had the heart to restrain him, given what had been done to him. So, they relied on a grunt guard or three? Dumb, as this was Sheppard. He could get by anyone, though not Peter Kavanagh. Nuh uh. Not when it came to actual intellect. This was where he could outwit and outshine.

Peter totally didn't need him to come to, to work out something wasn't right. After all, he'd almost called him Sheppard then called him Jones practically in the same breath and had told him he'd found him using a life signs detector even though he'd cut out his own sub-cu. Plus these were the hallways of Atlantis after all, and sooner or later, Sheppard's vision and mental faculties might return, belying Peter's story, maybe even implicating him. Peter had to go for broke.

He scanned once more for security cameras. No sign. His best recourse now would be to whack Sheppard into oblivion, and drag him to the jumper bay at the first sign of awareness. In the meanwhile, he would drag him by one arm as far as he could, maybe all the way inside a jumper, get him to dial some nasty-assed planet, and leave him there to rot amongst vengeful natives. He even had one in mind. Skojo. A waterworld. The Skojii apparently were once part of the Great Genii Alliance according to Atlantis's database. They hadn't abolished slavery yet either. Perfect. If only he could coax a sick, weak, and drugged Sheppard onto a jumper, get him to set coordinates to the planet, and have himself beamed back into his quarters as the jumper plummeted towards the briny with its single occupant. A quirky-looking outlander. Sheppard's fat mouth alone would condemn him to misery if he survived. Sheppard would tell them who he was, if he ever remembered, and wham!

For want of a better plan to ditch Sheppard to face a justice he wouldn't have to mete out personally, he carried on dragging the limp colonel towards the jumper bay in short bursts. Bastard was heavier than he looked. Time to goad him into action.  
"Can you run, Sir? They're right behind us! If we take a jumper, we can locate your team and rescue them!"  
"They have… Teyla? Rodney? Ronon?"  
Sheppard drew himself up onto wobbly legs, staggered a few paces, then collapsed. Peter resorted to bitch-slapping him.  
"Move it, soldier!"  
"Whuh?"  
"I said, 'Move it!'" Peter bitch-slapped then pimp-slapped him. That was fun though it hurt his hand. Seriously. Ow! Sheppard assumed a grim, determined macho expression, hauled himself upright again, and staggered a few more yards. At least they'd gained the jumper bay. Peter prodded him towards Jumper One, which opened merely on his approach. Peter rolled his eyes in disgust.

Sheppard crawled up and over the hatch, and rolled onto his back in a breathless heap. Then he appeared to take stock of himself. Uh oh. Better hurry things up.  
" 'M half naked. Why'm I half naked? I was in the infirmary, and they were about to… about to… "

_Think, Petey Boy, think!_  
"Waterboard you again!" He suppressed a snicker. "Shock you! Again! Extract information! Remember? The Genii are in league with the Replicators! The expedition is in jeopardy. This isn't Atlantis, sir. That wasn't the real infirmary. It's a simulation! A set-up! Lives are at stake. Your team! Your real team! Your real team didn't torture you! They would never do that. Right?"  
At that, Sheppard snapped his head up with a determined glower, reached for the pilot seat, and dragged himself into it. After staring at the controls for a few moments, he appeared confused.  
"I don't know… any gate addresses..."  
"I do!"  
"Whuh? Something's… not right here. Teyla's… on the mainland. Recuperating from our last mission. She took Short Round with, said she found the little guy a loving home. With Halling's cousin, uh - Daronto, and his wife... Merrin. Named the kid... Tex. Think that's what she said. In fact, I'm pretty sure of it. Tex. Yeah. I know. Sounds a little –" Sheppard rolled his hand, "cheesy."

Short Round?! Tex?! Sheppard totally had to be shitting him. Anyway, enough with the subterfuge. Peter scouted around for a blunt instrument as Sheppard droned on about the probable whereabouts of his precious team. It kind of made Peter want to present him with their cold, dead bodies. Just for kicks. But back to the task in hand – render Sheppard unconscious, shut the bastard up. Send him to his doom.

He rummaged irritably in an overhead toolkit, and a wrench came to hand along with a roll of duct tape. He hefted the wrench a few times in his hand to judge its weight, and smashed it hard once against Sheppard's right temple while he sat there blinking in confusion. He walloped the back of his head once for good measure, and the delusional fool slumped against the control panel, smacking his face. Sheppard squirmed and groaned, and fumbled for a non-existent holster on his right thigh, but since there was no going back Peter whacked him into oblivion, bringing the wrench once more on the back of his head, which bled profusely. That oughta do it. Yep, three strikes and he was out. Finally.

Peter rubbed his wrist. That hurt! Jarring his right forearm all the way up to his funny bone! He'd probably have a repetitive strain injury after this. He might just apply for worker's comp, though explaining how and why might be a bit of a chore.

Peter taped Sheppard's right hand to the controls, which caused the console to fire up. There was that HUD thing. Peter dialed, they went through the Atlantis gate despite some whinging and naysaying from the control room, then several other random gates, before reaching their final destination. MP7-something something something aka Skojo. Hah! Peter leaned over Sheppard, gripped his duct-taped hand, glanced up at the HUD, and steered the jumper towards a rocky shoreline.

He wasn't sure how to disable the inertial dampeners, but that was no biggie as he hoped the impact wouldn't kill Sheppard, just cripple him, or maybe pitch him out and wash him ashore onto one of their endless tiny islands and atolls.

Since Sheppard hadn't regained consciousness, Peter grinned. He readied himself to activate his beaming device, leaving Sheppard to his watery fate. Win-win for him, lose-lose for Sheppard. He only wished he could do the fly on the wall thing, and witness the Skojii have some fun with him, but he guessed he couldn't have everything. Still, he'd relish the thought just like he once did the entire drive to his old home in the 'burbs back in the day, thinking about those loser jocks as he hummed along to In Sync's Greatest Hits. And now he could add Sheppard to the list. Or was it Jones? Hah!

"So long, Indy! It's Davy Jones's locker for you! And your own team really did torture you! Hah!"

As the coast hurtled towards them, Peter ripped off the tell-tale duct tape just in case, scrunched it up, and tucked it into his pajama pants' pocket. Moments before impact into some outer bank, he opened the hatch, briefly feeling the gale force air current, the jumper screeching the while, then beamed himself via his old quarters on the Daedalus back to that corridor on Atlantis, where an 'o dark thirty' showing of Office Space and of course his alibi awaited him as well as something faux by way of a snack. By the morning, the entire expedition would believe that Sheppard had stolen a jumper while sick and delusional. As for his own involvement in Sheppard's disappearance or demise, no-one would ever know.

...

A/N - Uhm, hate to break this to you, Kavanagh, but you have incriminated yourself... Oh, dear! What a shame! XD


	7. Chapter 7

Many thanks to shepsgirl72, who clued me in about how to moderate guest/anon reviews. Good to know. Cheers, missus! So now said reviews will show up sooner, since I just have to give a thumbs up/down rather than let them fester for however many days in cyberlimbo. I've never deleted a review yet, so once I get a notification in my inbox, I shall let those reviews post. *does 'totes adorbs' Wraith queen voice***_ All of them!_** LOL! Anyway, on with the whump fest! And you all thought Sheppard was done being whumped? Bwah! Not in my whumpy paws, he isn't! XD

Oh, and ch 7 was growing too long, so I spliced it in twain. Well, not precisely in twain, but here's the first chunk of said splice as a bonus chapter in honor of Hump Day. Yeah. The rest will be turning up on Sat as promised. Enjoy! XD

...

He woke up flat on his back to the hangover from Hell and beyond, and endless prods to a now aching left shoulder. He guessed it was some kind of wake up call, one to which he clearly hadn't responded fast enough since his shoulder hurt like there was already some deep bruising there. But where was he? Who was that talking at him? Poking him? What was so urgent that he couldn't be left to wallow in his misery? Sleep it off?

His left leg was killing him. Felt like someone was sawing it off. No! He steeled himself to sit up, fight them off, reach down, feel his leg; save it!

He scrabbled his left hand against his leg as far as he could reach. It was splinted. To his right leg. Great. It was broken then, but that was better than the alternative. He sank back into his pillow.

"State your name." A gravely male voice. Forceful. Cold. This dude meant business. Uh oh.

"Whuh?" He swallowed hard, and peeled open one sticky eye only to look up at the unsteady vision of a broad set, redheaded man with a heavily pockmarked face. He wore some blue-gray, button-down uniform with huge lapels that looked woolen and itchy as hell. Reminded him of... someone. Someone bad.

"I repeat. State your name."

"I – don't recall." And he really didn't. He was too busy hurting all over. Every part of him especially his head and leg throbbed in unison with his rapidly beating heart. Felt like his eyeballs were being gouged out over and over again. With a melon baller. That or a backhoe.

"Give a name, and we will consider treating your injuries and rampant sickness."

He ran a shaky hand across his forehead and into his hairline. Sweat prickled his palms, and ran into his eyes and down his the sides of his nose and onto his pillow. He was pouring sweat. His entire body was soaking wet by the tacky feel of the sheet covering him to his waist, and the damp feel of whatever it was he was lying on. Some kind of prison cot? Yeah, most like. The thing creaked with every movement, and springs jabbed his back, adding to his discomfort. This sucked. Ass.

The gruff dude poked him in his ribs with... a baton. Back to business then. At least his ribs didn't hurt. Nothing broken there – for a change? So, who was he? He better come up with something. All this man wanted was a name. For now. He fished for one.

_Think..._

"Fair dues," he whispered hoarsely.

_Think!_

"Name's, uh... Indiana Jones. Indy for short," he croaked out. Good enough. It was all he could think of, but was it right? Sounded about right, though the frantic churning in his gut told him a different story. "I'd appreciate any help you can give me. Thanks." He flashed the winningest, shit-eatingest smile he could drum up, though he couldn't recall if it ever worked on anyone. Not that that ever stopped him from trying. Or so he thought.

"Neither your appreciation nor your gratitude have any place here, boy. And you can wipe that smile from off your face." The gruff dude scanned him up and down, then assumed a knowing look. "Did some lovelorn slave wench assist you?"

"I don't understand... your line of questioning." Uh oh. This was rapidly heading south. He brought out the big guns. Puppy dog eyes. Not that he remembered if that ever worked for him either, but it was worth a shot. He guessed it never stopped him before.

"In your escape. From your previous owner. No matter. You bear no owner mark we acknowledge here on the island. Decided to swim for it, did you?"

He could hear derision in the man's voice. He guessed he wasn't the only one to supposedly dare swim for it only to fall into the wrong hands.

"Owner mark? Whuh? I'm a free man, chief," he gruffed out.

"I sorely doubt that. You bear multiple telltale marks, boy. Whip marks. Burn marks. Slash marks. Stab marks. Abrasions about your wrists and ankles. Owner marks all. All the hallmarks of a life of slavery. Which one is your current owner mark? Is it the one about your right ear? Well?"

He was prompted into spilling by a sharp poke in his presenting left shin, which merely set off a wave of agony. He writhed on the cot, gripping its frame for dear life.

"What about the one on your chest? There is a small, perfectly round pocked scar on your right upper arm, though it is flesh colored." The man moved closer, and prodded him with a baton right on that scar. Funnily enough, it didn't hurt him, though he braced himself for another onslaught of pain.

"This is not a mark I have seen before. Is that the most recent, perchance? A precursor to a tattoo? We would return you, of course, per the law of the land, but we know not of any of these marks on Blerry Bluff, since none is registered with us. We are too insignificant for such attention to detail. Are you from Skojo City? Odd customs there. Not our ways. The old ways. We mark in a way that we can sell on, unlike the uppity inner islanders or the fancy big islanders, who mark their slaves permanently."

_Slave?! You got to be shitting me!_

He let go the frame, and put a shaky hand to his right ear, and felt a long, thin welt. It was still sore from... from what? He'd been badly beaten recently that was pretty much a given. But - by whom? He raised both hands to his face, and turned them over and over before his eyes. His wrists looked like he'd been marked there somehow.

His right hand flew to his chest, and he could feel a scar just above his sternum. He ran his hands up and down his bare arms. There really was a round pock mark on his upper left arm alongside two long grazes which were both, what, only a flesh wound? He frowned. Where had all these marks come from? Indy gulped. He was a real mess. But no way was he ever a slave. Although he recalled pretty much close to nothing much about himself, he knew at least that would never fly with him.

"I don't... remember." He didn't want to remember. He just knew remembering would hurt. Heck, everything hurt. Especially his chest from probable congestion, and his right arm was on fire. His left leg throbbed. His back felt itchy and tender. He reached his left arm to over his right shoulder, his fingers finding purchase on abused skin. He felt long, thin, raised scabs verging on scars. In rows. How the hell did that happen? And why? What was he blocking out? Whatever it was, it had to be monumental.

He could feel seemingly endless scars from his shoulder blades to his collar bone. He traced his fingers along two longer ones. They reached right across his collar bone to his navel. He felt several raised, almost parallel lines along both flanks. Holy crap!

He could hear the steady whooshing sound of a whip descending time and time again against his bare back, some strikes reaching his chest and belly, even his face, and saw in his mind's eye another heavy-set man and a tiny, muscular woman taking it in turns to flog him senseless. That couldn't be real. Could it? Something told him it was.

They both had brown eyes. His were cold, hers were warm. Maybe she hadn't wanted to beat him quite so hard. Maybe his punishment hadn't quite fit the crime. But... then he'd been punished further. By two men he might have once trusted but not any more. Never again.

So, he'd been burned then stabbed after a flogging. He felt his eyes well up. What had he done? Then someone else he had once trusted with his life time and time again had half-healed him only to half-drown him. Waterboard him. Then another someone he'd misguidedly placed his trust in dumped him here, wherever _here_ was.

There was no-one here for him, but he was pretty sure there was no-one out there for him either, no-one who cared if he lived or died. Except maybe... a brother? He had a brother? Davy? Davy. Jones. Davy Jones. Indy and Davy. That sounded about right, too. The names went together. He had a brother named Davy. He ordered himself to focus.

"Then I claim you per salvage rights."

"Whuh?" He couldn't think straight, he was so sick. One thing was for sure - this was just not right.

"Until or unless we locate this Master Chownz of yours. You undoubtedly bear your owner's name."

"You found me? Where?" He struggled to keep the plea out of his voice.

"A local ne're-do-well found you washed up on the beach. I paid him off. You are now the property of Sheriff Seb Blerrybuck of Blerry Bluff, namely me." The gruff dude thumbed towards himself. "Welcome to our island, Indiana Blerrybuck. Indy. Yes, that name will suffice. Sounds somewhat Skojii. Unlike Chownz. Some offworlder? No matter. You will be tended then marked outer island style. And Indy, you will find I am firm but fair. Do not irk me." The man glared, then turned on his booted heel.

Indy declined to thank his so-called new owner as the man slammed the cell door shut. The clanking sound reverberated through the cot frame all the way to his broken leg, forcing him to clutch it at the knee. He grimaced as fierce shock waves of pain shot up his leg and into his spine, taking residence in the back of his neck, radiating into his skull.

He struggled not to rub his leg. Not yet. It had to heal some first. Instead he rubbed the back of his head, scratched his scalp vigorously, and mouthed this new name he was supposed to use.

Indiana Blerrybuck.

No.

It was all wrong.

He was Indiana Jones. He had a brother called Davy. Who had a locker? At the bottom of the sea? He'd almost drowned down there, tangled up in seaweed. Why could he remember nothing else? Did he come from across the sea? Had he been thrown overboard? Had he really taken a swim for it? Where was he from?

He half-remembered being ripped out of a screaming block of hollowed-out metal only to slam into a brick wall, snapping his left leg. The brick wall had yielded, morphing into swirls and eddies of water. He could still taste salt.

He felt himself being tossed and turned, desperate to grasp his leg and stop it from twirling around in counterpoint to the rest of him, until one arm found purchase on a rock, lost purchase, and found purchase again on a fistful of seaweed. It, too, betrayed him, tried to ensnare him, grip him, tug him under, and he fought against a riptide with his three good limbs. He finally tore himself free of it only to succumb to exhaustion.

The incoming tide had nudged him further and further along a stretch of shoreline, flipping him over and over against abrasive sand and seashells with every crashing wave. He had fought against it at first, but he then snatched at the air and, finding he could breathe, he allowed it to happen, allowed the tide to take him, until it went out, leaving him half-buried. So the sheriff wasn't lying to him. He really had washed up on a beach. Somewhere. Somehow.

This sucked ass and then some. Indy closed his eyes, threw his left arm over his face in an abortive attempt to stifle tears. He was spent. Sick. For want of a better course of action, he tried to reach for the thin woolen blanket draped at the end of the cot he was lying on, to pull it up and over his trembling body, but even moving one inch set his bones jangling. He gave up. Instead he yanked the thin sheet up further since it was still within his grasp. He tucked it under his armpits, braced his arms against the edges of the cot to steady himself, closed his eyes, and promptly succumbed to a fitful sleep.

...

Indy jerked awake as something cold hit his torso.

_What gives?_

He made to grab his leg again, to save it, keep on saving it, save it until he couldn't save it any further, but his fumbling hands were slapped down, which only made him fight all the more, however feeble he was in his current condition.

"Save... m'leg... Pl'se... "

"Desist, boy. I am here to help."

He felt someone dab at his injuries with a wet cloth soaked in something smelling kind of medicinal if not borderline offensive. Whoever it was also attempted to pour something down his throat. He shied away from that, batting a hand away with little success. The same someone slapped his cheek, and pinned his hands down with ease, which scared him big time.

Whoever it was slid a hand around the back of his neck, ran it up into his hairline, gripped his head and raised it off the pillow as if it belonged to them and not to him. He balked at that, resented it, but the choice wasn't his just now. He was too weak to resist, too weak to protest. Someone, maybe the same someone, tucked an extra pillow behind his head to prop him up. He knew that feeling of old. Still, it sent a jolt along his bum leg, and pulled at taut, lingering scabs on his back. Gah!

He prized open his eyelids using facial muscles he didn't know he had, wishing he had matchsticks to prop them open or could even use his fingers to part them – and hoped to see a familiar face, perhaps even someone who gave a damn about him, someone who would nurse him back to health.

He stared into the baggy, pale blue eyes of an old, gray-haired woman, searching her features for some semblance of familiarity. He didn't recognize her, though she reminded him of the aged version of a cold-eyed harpy he once met, who wore tight-fitting, dark brown leather and high heels. That one once had him beaten bloody with his hands tied behind his back, and had threatened to kill him several times. So what else was new?

He was a stranger in a strange land. He was even a stranger in his own body. In his own mind.

"No, boy, you know me not, but you will know me well before long. You may call me Ettifah," she declared in a grating, high-pitched, granny lady voice.

Was he always that readable?

"Now drink this. It will help you. In what was and what is yet to be."

That sounded ominous. Still, he was thirsty, if the old sports sock and twisted shoe insert lining his mouth and throat were anything to go by. And this Ettifah seemed like the real deal. A nice li'l ol' healer lady. Okay, maybe not so nice. She'd already slapped him even though he lay on his sickbed, pretty much battered, weak and drained, not to mention in pain. He guessed he must've looked pretty bad, too, because every time he winced and grimaced, this Ettifah let out a gasp.

He couldn't get the image of that lascivious harpy out of his mind. Was she a previous owner? He could barely move by himself, so whichever way he was completely at her mercy. He had to trust someone. For want of a better course of action given his current energy level, he drank willingly from the flask she proffered him. It was warm water, laced with something bitter tasting. He needed two hands to hold it, like a little kid. Sheesh.

"Guess I need a sippy cup," he quipped. She merely stared at him.

He couldn't stop his full-body shaking, and spilled some of the medicinal drink onto his chest. It made him shiver. She instantly dabbed his chest for him with a rag, pausing wide-eyed over a scar there, then left the rag on the headboard. He eyed the rag. It was too skimpy to be a loincloth. He hoped someone would leave him some clothing. He peeked under the blanket. He was wearing something. Boxers. Yeah, boxers. His boxers. Blue and white striped ones. They seemed familiar. Comfortable. He stared at them long and hard, hoping to remember what else he normally wore. He found himself fumbling against his sternum, then checking his right wrist. There was nothing there bar numb keloid scars on both counts. Indy felt a wave of disappointment and an overwhelming sense of loss.

...

The pink light of dawn filtering through his eyelids awoke a tight sensation in his chest and head, and he longed to drift back to sleep, to avoid reacquainting himself with his uncooperative body. One reason was due to some prolonged sickness and the fact he hadn't yet coughed up any overnight build-up of phlegm, the other – a rough metal collar. He pushed himself upright to aid his breathing, hunched over, coughed up into the rag that'd been left for him whether it was a loincloth or not, then sank back down, already exhausted even though his day had barely even begun. He ran his fingers around the entire expanse of the collar. It was seamless. Crap.

This was it then. He was a slave. With memory loss. And like the man said, given the nature of his injuries, he had always been a slave. An abused one at that. Seemed everyone wanted to beat him or shoot him or whip him or stab him or burn him or smack him around at one time or another. He guessed he had that effect. Or stun him. He had the strangest feeling that never got old.

It made him wonder about Davy. Who owned his brother? Had they been owned together? He'd co-operate with his current owner for now, then go find Davy when he got the chance, though he couldn't quite see his brother's face in his mind's eye. He'd have to check his own face in a mirror, window or puddle first, and transpose that image onto his idea of who the heck Davy was, how he might look. It gave him hope, something or someone to latch onto. He couldn't recall having any other family left.

He'd somehow have to find out what clothing he wore when he was washed ashore, and whether any other items had washed up with him. Try to work out where the hell he came from, either to go back there or possibly even avoid the place. He'd make cautious, cloak-and-dagger inquiries about Indy and Davy Jones. He just had to stay positive. At least his broken leg had been slapped in some kind of cast while he was out of it.

Indy vowed to recover, co-operate, then escape. Make a run for it to the nearest... 'gate? Yeah, 'gate! He'd leave the details of any foolhardy plan on the back burner till he could think straight. Just maybe his memory would come back. In the meantime, he mouthed his name once more. Indy. It didn't quite fit. Maybe he was Han.

"So long, Indy! It's Davy Jones's locker for you!"

Whuh? No! That wasn't his name! It was a trick! His name was... his name was... Reed Richards? Joe Shmoe? Joe Sixpack? Shep?

_- think, John, think!_ –

John!

Stupid!

So he was John. John What? John... Watt? John Watt. It was all he had to go by, but it was good enough for now. John stifled a telltale sob of relief, sucking in his dry lips, his tongue running over abrasions there, then allowed himself the sleep of healing, praying he would still remember his whole name come sun-up.

His last thoughts were of not having a brother called Davy after all.

...


	8. Chapter 8

Okay, it's almost Saturday. Close enough! :P

*sings tunefully*

A-whumping we will go!

A-whumping we will go!

We'll catch a Shep and whack him with a whip

And then we'll let him go!

(Or not... XD. Uhm, that was a small and rather sorry nod towards A-Hunting We Will Go, written by Thomas Arne for the 1777 production of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, performed in Covent Garden in Blighty. Don't say you can't get yersels edumified/edumacated via fan fic! Having said that, I suspect Tommy Boy is turning in his grave... )

...

"John. My name – it's John. Johnnn... Watt!" he croaked, his voice hoarse from disuse and lack of moisture. He looked up through barely open eyelids at his geriatric nurse. Ettifah. Yeah, Ettifah. That was it. He felt pleased with himself. He'd remembered something, whereupon he grinned. Ettifah merely rolled her eyes at him, and waved a riding crop in his face. Uh oh. Bad move. John cringed, and reached for the sheet now down by his hips, pulling it up to his chin, though he didn't remember kicking the sheet off considering how cold it was in his cell. He was always shivering, always pulling the sheet up, but often finding it at the foot of his cot or on the floor. Always? Often? How long had he lain there?

"Chon? I will say this for the last time this week, and you would do well to set my words finally to heart. Those names fore and last are not Skojii, and you will not use them in public. And your last name is not yours to own. Call yourself what you will inside your own brainbox," she rapped his forehead with the crop, "but state it not aloud. You know what today is, boy? I've been giving you a daily countdown. Well?"

"Lift-off."

"Lift yourself off. I say again. Well?"

"All right already. I get it." John scrubbed a hand across his face, then wiped away sleep from his eyes. "Today's the day the fun starts. It's been... about a week. Send in the clowns. No, don't bother. They're here." He rolled his eyes.

"Clowuhnz? What are these clowuhnz of which you speak? No matter. Allow me to check your injuries, and then you can limber up, start moving about; start helping me."

"Helping you? I thought I was to work for the sheriff?" He'd imagined latrine duty and general scrubbing. He'd seen others clean up, even after him while he lay there recovering alone in that dreary cell from what was clearly the aftermath of a severe beating, a broken leg, and a near drowning, though those slaves generally eyed him from time to time with sly resentment. What, like he was having himself a lie-in? He'd tried to communicate with them. He nodded, he smiled a grim smile, he rolled his eyes, he sighed, he shrugged, sometimes he even said, "Hey." All his attempts at friendliness were rebuffed. He knew they were slaves by their metal collars or bracelets or anklets, which he now deduced to be some copper alloy given the green stains around their necks, and the hangdog expressions on their faces. Plus their hands were scoured raw. They all had split fingertips, and some of the splits looked infected, oozing pus and plasma. They were that or crusty. Their bare feet didn't look much better. Neither did their bare backs. He prayed he wasn't about to join their ranks.

"My Sebby bought you for me as a gift for my ninetieth," she squeaked. "Lovely boy, my Sebby. Sit yourself up now, and lift yourself off."

"Yeah." John heaved a sigh. "Just gimme a moment, huh."

John braced his hands against the thin mattress, and pushed himself upright, dragging his bum leg. Gah! This sucked. He choo-chooed his breath, then used his ass cheeks to kind of butt-walk backwards until he could sit up against the headboard, though it cost him the little energy he still possessed.

Ettifah rapped him smartly on his nose with that damn riding crop, and then rolled it in front of his face from his forehead to his knees. He glared at her, but she repeated the action, her eyes narrowed. Okay, she was indicating he should hunch himself over enough for her to examine him. Thankfully he didn't have to struggle to remove a shirt as they hadn't bothered to given him one yet. Saved his sore arm from over-extension at least. He checked it with a glance. Yep, bandaged and weepy. He knew burns took longer to heal. His back merely itched now, and he rubbed it against the headboard like a... bear scratching its back against a tree. It was bliss. He wished he had someone to scratch it for him. Maybe if he ripped off a strip of bark from the crutch this Ettifah had propped against the cot for him. At least that's what he thought it was. Looked more like a broken-off branch. He might even dare ask to borrow the riding crop to use as a back scratcher. Okay, maybe not.

"Brace yourself. I'm cleaning off those old scabs." Ettifah grinned, her eyes flickering up and down his body, then attacked his back with something like a loofah, scraping it up and down slowly. It scratched the itch, but soon drew blood. John squirmed. He could feel blood trickling downwards and into the waistband of his boxers as she scrubbed away with more vigor now like he was some old washboard. He maintained a death grip on the bed rails. He was grateful for his high threshold for pain, then wondered why that memory came to the forefront and not others more obvious like his own damn name.

"Ow! Why... would he do that? Give me to you"? Nngghh! "Wait, you called him... your, uh, Sebby! You two... on first name basis? Wait!" Gah, now she was rubbing some lotion over his sore back, which was now on fire much like his arm was, but she soon went back to her torturous scrubbing, making him wince and twitch, and scan for the nearest exit whenever she caught the occasional scab. Then she fetched a pot, and slathered on some kind of cold gel.

John sighed in relief. Whatever it was, it did the job, soothing his back from his shoulders all the way to – whoa! – just below his waistband at the back, up his flanks and around his hips, and - holy crap! - down below his waistband at the front. Her roaming hands went around his neck and along his collarbones and shoulders.

Just when he was about to protest, he felt he could stretch at last. Scar gel? He chanced it, let go the bed rails, and stretched his neck, arms and back, and his right leg, which twinged in sympathy with his left leg. It was still in a cast below his knee. He thought about ripping off that strip of bark and poking it down the cast to alleviate some of the itching along his calf. He eyed that riding crop, which was now tucked into her belt. She scanned him up and down, and grinned a toothless grin.

"Sebillian Drosselnickel Blerrybuck The Third is my one and only child, boy. I am Ettifah Mizzleney Blerrydoe."

John grinned at the local naming system, then slapped on a neutral expression.

"That explains it. So, what are my duties?" He hoped he hadn't been bought for anything... intimate. She was old enough to be his great grandmother. The image of that aged harpy came to mind again, though the light in that one's eyes had winked out unlike this one. Her eyes twinkled, though they looked like crushed prunes with the pit leaking out the center, and her face looked like an old baseball mitt.

"Hah! Nothing strenuous at first, and no, I'll not demand sexual favors, though I admit I am sorely tempted in your case." She scanned him from head to toe, then sighed deeply. That had him mentally reaching for the sheet again. "My supplies are plentiful, but before long I needs must gather more leaves, herbs, fungi and spices, grind them up. Here. Take these. My Sebby's old clothes. They're clean, boy. You needn't scrunch up your cute pointy nose at me. I need me a clean slave not a filthy one, though a little dirt and sweat never marred a handsome man's looks." She winked, which made him shiver. "Now, get up, boy. Get up!" She lowered the bed rail, pulled out the riding crop, and tapped the headboard with it.

John braced himself, winced, swung his legs over the side of the cot, and pulled himself up using the headboard. He was standing! For the first time in over a week. One small step for a man. It felt good to be upright. But where was he headed apart from out of the proverbial frying pan?

...

John stood in the doorway, his grip weak and shaky on the doorpost. He steadied himself, took in a deep breath, and soaked up the first rays of the rising sun. It felt good to have the sun in his face. Any sun. Any sun? What the hell did that mean? The sky was on the purple side of blue. This wasn't home. He conjured up an image of a sky more on the green side of blue. He closed his eyes, and imagined himself flying until the sky grew navy blue then black and he could see the stars. But that was just a dream.

Just a dream.

He could smell the sea, hear gulls screeching in the distance, fighting over fish scraps, he guessed, and there was a gentle breeze on his face. He took in a deep breath, and blocked out thoughts of a sky of another color. He was done hurting. Time to move on.

He was finally good to go. The sheriff released him from jail with a manly slap on one still tender shoulder. He tried not to buckle under the not so friendly assault, and maintained his white-knuckle grip on the doorpost. It was a message. He had to toughen up or else. Co-operate. John grimaced, and nodded his compliance.

Ettifah had given him a pair of dark green mid-calf pants which buttoned down the side of both legs. He left the last seven buttons undone on his left leg since he sported a light cast from just below his knee to just above his ankle. The pants also bore a short flap out front, and a longer one at the back. The waistband had five buttonholes, and he cinched it tight, using the tightest buttonhole to keep his pants up, since he was a tad on the lean side. He didn't yet know if that was compared to the locals or if it was his personal norm. He had also been given a matching vest. All in all, he knew he didn't look fine, but the clothes were clean even if they were a tad drafty, and he'd managed to keep his boxers on, changing quickly while the sheriff and his deputies were busy beating some poor sap with their batons. John had looked away, feeling bad for the guy, but he silently thanked him for the distraction. He didn't want his boxers confiscated, though he wasn't so sure why he felt he needed them so bad.

He hadn't been given shoes. Apparently that wasn't permitted. He checked his reflection in a window. Who that was staring back at him? Some sick, lanky, barefoot, pale guy with dark, spiky hair, light, red-rimmed eyes, a thin face sporting serious five o'clock shadow, and body in dire need of a few decent meals. He ran his hand back and forth over the top of his head in an attempt to flatten his hair, to make it look more presentable. Nope. No dice. He resorted to combing it through with his fingers instead, but that only made it worse. Ettifah stared at the top of his head, and smirked.

"My, you look handsome! You were not born a slave, Indy, this I know, just as I was not born an old woman. By the by, I have your papers," she crowed. "New ones issued by my son the sheriff, since we could not locate anyone by the name of Chownz anywhere in or near Skojo City this past week. He was probably an offworlder, who has clearly since forfeited you. Not even that symmetrical scar on your breastbone rang any chimes with anyone in authority, though I well know from whence it came." She gave him a knowing look. John frowned. What was she talking about?

"I'll tell you this now, boy, so mark it well. You are to be freed once I pass into the next world, though I am in no hurry in that regard. My Sebby agreed on it. Your time with me will give you time to remember who you truly are, give you time to recover. You say you are Chon. You will find this Chon inside yourself one day. Now, come. Indulge this dowager. Take my arm. That is all the physical contact I crave these days. I shall content myself with admiring you, healing you, and fattening you up. I will use my riding crop on you only when you tempt... irk me. I have a herb and vegetable garden I would wish you to tend, plus some flower beds. For that, I might insist you strip." Ettifah cackled, and swished her riding crop in the air, then thwacked his ass with it.

_Great. Go, John. Gimme a J_.

John rubbed the back of his head nervously, hefted the crutch, and spun it, then hooked his other arm into hers, instantly regretting it. Her arm was thin, flabby, lacking in muscle tone, and covered in age spots. He could even feel her bones. He knew he shouldn't feel grossed out, but this living skeleton was making overtures. Crap.

So this world was his home. For now. He had no choice. Seemed he was now the boy toy to some nonogenarian wannabe dominatrix medicine woman who had half a mind towards healing leaving the other half in the gutter. He had to hope she would keep her word and not molest him. So far, she had only healed him, though she had lingered over touching his back and flanks. He guessed even old chicks dug scars. He felt like diving back into the sea to wash away the feel of her gnarly old paws on his body even if she had only touched him up to fix him up. At least he hoped the sensation of bony fingers ghosting over him from head to toe for longer than necessary and lingering in some places while he'd lain there out of it was nothing more than a false memory brought about by delirium.

"Watch how the other slaves act and walk, boy. Copy them. Try not to stand out. I wish to keep you around for a merry while." She grinned. It wasn't a pretty sight.

"On it," he replied grimly, for want of a better response. He couldn't draw himself up to full height any time soon in any case so most likely looked subservient enough. John limped along, slightly bowed, uphill and downhill, along a windy path or two, head hung low, and almost fell asleep on his feet especially on a strenuous uphill climb. It was almost beyond his current energy level to put one foot in front of the other. Escape would have to wait until he was fully recovered. And escape he would, though to where was anyone's guess, including his own.

He finally stumbled over rather than stepped over the threshold of a quaint, seashell-covered thatched cottage, his head spinning now. Ettifah shoved him further into the cottage then whacked him across his ass, driving him into a small room off the kitchen with nothing but a burlap-covered palliasse on the floor. He was out before he hit the proverbial sack.

...

His routine soon became nothing beyond sleeping, eating, digging and daydreaming. And being under scrutiny. Being healed and being hurt. John frowned. His owner didn't draw blood, but there were times when he could feel his ass glowing after a day's worth of being struck randomly with that damn riding crop. At least she didn't offer to rub in her soothing cream down below. At least that.

"You never call me Indy like the others. Why?" John took a swig of water from the flask she left out for him, tipping the last of it over his head, letting it trickle down the back of his sunburned neck. Boy, she wasn't kidding about doing yard work pretty much in the buff. Good thing it was heading towards summer judging by the way the sun set later and later each day. He'd mostly kept his boxers on, so he reckoned it could be worse, though they were beginning to look threadbare. At least there weren't a whole pack of fake-tan, fake-blonde cougars in straw hats sipping mai tais in the shade, with long, fake fingernails painted bright red, with face lifts that made them look like goosed cats, ogling him while he sweated it though why such a grisly image came to mind, he didn't know.

Ettifah merely poked around some pots with a trowel, so yeah maybe she was really just a scraggy, benign herbal healer lady and not some retired domme after all. Her face looked like tanned hide, her long hair was gunmetal gray, her nails were short and chipped, and she generally knocked back something like a beer, occasionally pouring him one. Still, he could have sworn she had him digging holes, filling up other holes, then digging more holes, watching him the while, lazily swishing that crop from the comfort of her deckchair in the shade of an awning. She was yet to plant anything beyond those seed trays on her patio. John looked about him. Damn yard looked like giant moles had taken up lodgings.

"You are Chon. You said so yourself, and you said it with such conviction, I believed you then as I believe you now."

"Yeah. Sure." John shrugged, and carried on digging hole after hole.

...

"Why'm I here?" He asked one day around mid-summer as he wiped his brow, then rested both hands on top of the fork handle, struggling against calling her out.

"I already told you that. To help with the gardening. And to entertain. You are easy on these old eyes, boy, more so now you have filled out after your sickness. You have also become pleasingly dark in the sun. Brings out that unusual green in your pretty eyes." She looked him up and down, her eyes lingering, well, just about everywhere. like she didn't know which part of him to molest first.

He looked himself up and down. At first he'd developed endless freckles especially across his shoulders, then pretty much his entire body had become nut brown, rendering his freckles pretty much invisible. Well, apart from below the drooping waistline of his traitorous boxers. They kept sliding down, He hitched them up in response. He felt pleased that he had several tan lines in varying shades from bronze to olive to lily white to red and peeling all around his hips and tailbone depending on how low his boxers rode. An all-over tan would only have meant one thing. That Ettifah had gotten her way. It was a battle of wills. A control thing.

John sighed. Sure, the sun had healed him, the outdoor work had strengthened him, plus she was a great cook. Yep, food had played a major part in his recovery. He loved her... peelyfowl casserole and her blerrymeat pasty and her bindy sausages. All in all, life wasn't terrible. So long as the old bat kept her paws off him apart from creaming his scars every evening at sundown, and wrapping his hands when the blisters on his palms burst. Times were his feet needed wrapping, but that he could do for himself. She seemed to enjoy slapping on sun block for him, too, even in places he could reach. Yep, there was a definite glee in her rheumy old eyes as she came at him with one pot or another. He fought to stand stock still while she slathered something on pretty much every part of his anatomy. He rode out the indignity of it all, telling himself it would benefit him in the long run. A fit, healthy, supple, well-nourished body would take him home faster and quicker than a thin one inhibited by sickness, malnutrition and scar tissue. Though where was home?

...

The sun was beginning to set earlier and earlier. It was heading towards fall. Had he really been here some six months? His livid scars had faded to purple as the once purple ones had since faded to silver. Ettifah mostly only ever threatened to beat the crap out of him. She mostly whacked him lightly on his ass from time to time, though the whacks added up to his ass constantly feeling like he'd warmed it too long by the fire. Maybe it was just to remind him he was hers to do with as she saw fit. He wondered what she might have wanted from him had she been a lot younger.

'Her Sebby' the sheriff had let him be. He'd finally ditched his crutch, and just used a walking stick from time to time, mostly after a long day's work. Yep, getting fit had been a good idea. He could finally plan his escape. Go find Davy – except - there was no Davy. He was pretty certain his parents were long dead. He had no-one. He thought he had a team once. Who watched his back. Who loved him each in their own way, and he them.

...

_So long, Indy! It's Davy Jones's locker for you! And your own team really did torture you!_

"No!"

"Chon?!"

"' M good!" he yelled.

"Sl'p, boy, or 'll t'k'm'ridin' cr'p t'y'r... aaasss..." she slurred, then she began to snore once more. John sighed in relief, then shook his head.

He put his nightmare down to the stifling heat of late summer. Unable to sleep, he did push-ups and sit-ups, though he clapped his hands between moves only when he was out in the field gathering kindling so as not to disturb his owner. He usually took forever, and since he brought her fistfuls of herbs, some truffles, and something akin to cinnamon sticks with each excursion, she merely gazed upon him fondly, and ruffled his hair, calling him a good boy. It was all he could do not to throttle her, though occasionally he willed her to turn even more to leather and sawdust than she clearly already was.

...

"You having trees delivered?"

"Of course. Soon, boy, soon."

"Yeah, right," he muttered under his breath, then started on another hole where she'd drizzled yet another X with white paint. This was getting old, though he relished the exercise, going for the burn.

Fifty saplings arrived the very next day. Go figure. He planted them in blistering heat over the course of three days. She watched him plant from the shade of her now faded awning.

"There is a hint of red in your hair from the sun these days," she said in passing. John rolled his head.

"Listen, I'm grateful for the whole lengthy, convalescent healing thing," he said with a shrug, "but – "

"We shall be taking a trip, boy. Tomorrow. My Sebby has some regular business to attend to with the magistrate in Peely Point and has no wish to ride a bindy such a great distance in weather such as this. You are to drive us. We go the scenic route. Your eyes. So expressive. They ask me why. I shall tell you. There is a mushroom cave along the coast. Some of the mushrooms there have healing properties, and I have run out of dried ones. Time to replenish my supplies before winter. Don't forget to act like a slave."

"But I am a slave," he replied with a shrug.

_I have the scars to prove it._

"You do need to start acting like one, boy, especially in Peely Point. Big town. Well, big for hereabouts. Go watch some slaves downvillage. Learn from them. Don't look free men in the eye, and don't speak unless you are spoken to. That, boy, is an order. Here, take this five-drammel note, grab the yoke from behind the shed, and go fetch us two barrels of mead from the Wraith'n'Bindy. Change is one drammel. Rempy forgot to deliver any this week. One for the trip, one for when we get home. I will pack us all a picnic."

"Wraith?" That sounded-

"The pub, boy! The pub!"

"Got it."

"Keep your gaze upon the ground, and don't answer anyone back!"

"Got it!"

"I should come with you, but the plants still need watering, and I must bake us some loaves."

"I can do the slave thing. Trust me." John flashed a lop-sided grin. She tutted then blushed. John chuckled for the first time in an age. He had just been given some freedom, but despite his cockiness, even with some six months on Skojo under his belt, he wasn't sure he could pass. Something told him he just wasn't slave enough.

...

John limped into the village along a cobbled road, the yoke about his neck, two empty barrels dangling from each end. He kept his head down apart from glancing from time to time at the odd passing slave. He knew them by their filthy, calloused and split feet.

His neck ached. Ettifah was right. He hadn't been born to this. He was used to looking all men in the eye. He nodded at anyone shoeless, but kept his head low when he spied anything resembling footwear, even the local equivalent of flip-flops.

There wasn't much to learn from the bulk of the taciturn slave traffic apart from how they bore themselves. At least not at first. They were barefoot and shirtless, sported metal collars, bracelets, anklets and sometimes even nose rings, all forged from the same hammered local copper-like metal. Other than that, they were young and old, fair and dark, fat and thin, tall and short, male and female. All seemed kind of foreign to this place, one way or another. It was either a slight accent, or a non-local gesture, or a subtle shift in dress - a top hitched up too high, or draped too low, a subtle defiance of strict dress code or appearance, which included toe rings, tiny braids, eyebrows plucked in a strange design, tribal scars, tattoos, piercings. Blink and you'd miss it.

So, they'd all ended up here from far and wide. John sighed, then steeled himself. He could do this. He looked plain enough. He could fit right in despite his exotic looks. It was all in the way you bore yourself.

At first John slouched as best he could, but with a hill or three to climb it pulled on his sore, sunburned shoulders and the still tender scar tissue there, plus there was still a ways to go. Standing straight made bearing the yoke easier. There was less pull, plus that way the collar didn't chafe so much. Before long, he was marching along into town and along Main Street, spirits high, humming a half-remembered refrain about a solitary man, his leg twinging less now he walked more balanced. He soon drew quite the crowd of puzzled onlookers. Crap. Way to screw up, John!

...

John slouched, quit humming, dropped his gaze, set his expression to blank, and dragged his heels the moment the villagers began to stare. He'd blown it. Still there was always damage control. There was no turning back. He could do this. Had to do this if they were heading to this Peely Point around sunrise, where he'd most likely be under even more scrutiny. No, he had to pass this test. He needed to stay off everyone's... radar.

He stepped on something sharp, but didn't dare stop to tend his feet. He winced as he let the thorn or thumbtack or whatever the hell it was embed in his heel instead. He could pick it out later, tough it out for now. One thing he had noticed, the other slaves generally had cracked, leathery, calloused feet and could probably walk on broken glass. Their feet were broad and splayed and about the same color as the rest of them, if not darker with ingrained dirt. His own feet, he noticed, were long and lean, most likely used to shoes, and weren't quite as tan as the rest of him despite his six months or so of being barefoot in the blazing local sun. Yeah, his feet were grubby, but they weren't quite wrecked, and the dirt wasn't ingrained. He soaked himself in a barrel of rainwater whenever he got the chance, and kept himself reasonably well groomed including filing his nails with a rasp he'd found in the tool shed. Uh oh. Why had he not paid attention? Why had Ettifah not clued him in? Then again, she was ninety plus change, and distracted by plants and seedlings and the occasional terrified delivery boy. In any case her eyes rarely rested on his feet.

There was the Wraith'n'Bindy a stone's throw away. The weathered sign showed a large, long-haired pale dude with filed teeth and creepy eyes pulling a wide-eyed rider off a rearing, local horse thing. Looked a bit like a cross between a zebra and a giraffe. A zombie and a gizebra. Or was that a zebraffe? For some reason John shuddered, and his right hand flew to his chest, feeling the weird scar there.

A gang of around ten teenagers blocked his path. Damn! He gave an upward nod, then bowed his head, looking up at them through his eyelashes. John braced himself.

"Help you?"

The leader of the pack snorted. Some young buck all swagger and bravado. Two girls giggled nearby.

"You dress like a slave, and yet you do not bear yourself as one neither do you speak as one."

"Yeah, how about that. I'm not from around these parts. I'm from... Skojo City. That'd be why I talk funny, chief." John tried to walk around them, but they began to move in on him. He was encumbered by the yoke. Crap.

The ringleader snapped his fingers, and two heavy-set knuckle-draggers stepped forward, circled him, then ran at him. They grabbed each end of the yoke, and pinned him to the wall by his neck, crushing the collar against his windpipe. A crowd of older onlookers gathered, jabbing their fingers at him and the teenagers, and tutting behind their hands, but no-one came to his aid.

"Whose slave are you?"

"I belong to Ettifah Blerrydoe," he choked out. "Not that it's any of your ... uh, scratch that."

"Why have we not seen you before?"

"I was bought around springtime... by the local sheriff. Hey, why don't you... go ask him. Jailhouse is... just over the way. Betting you've seen... the inside of it... more than once."

"Yet he is not on the beat to ask. You are. And you have a mouth on you, slave. Name?"

"I'm Indiana, uhm... Blerrydoe."

The crowd, which had steadily grown, began to cackle in earnest. He'd forgotten. He was supposed to say Blerrybuck. He just wasn't used to the difference in last names between the genders. No-one had bothered to explain anyways, maybe taking it for granted that he knew, or that he wasn't dumb.

"You are clearly a fool, even for a slave. Though maybe you are not a man after all, but a rather ugly woman." The ringleader stared at him, eyeing him from head to toe. The rest of the gang prodded each other, and belly-laughed. The two girls just kind of tittered behind their hands, and whispered to each other, eyeing up the boys, bolstering their bravado.

"And a hairy one at that!"

John seethed, but he didn't dare argue back. He just sucked in his lips, and averted his gaze. He needed to let this wash over him, go buy the damn mead. Get home asap. Home? He wanted to go home. He guessed he must've finally looked pathetic and slave-like at that point, as the ringleader snapped his fingers again, and the knuckle-draggers dropped him. John went down on one knee, and clutched his throat, rubbing away the new soreness there.

"Go then, but remember, we don't care for slaves who strut like they own the place, or who talk out of turn."

John staggered upright, adjusted the yoke around his neck, found his balance, and limped on slowly, his head hung low. The crowd dispersed, and everyone went about their business. Or so he hoped. The gang of teenagers seemed to have some business in the street and not behind closed doors, and resorted to kicking a ball around in some five-a-side soccer game using doorways as goal posts. He set the yoke down outside the Wraith'n'Bindy, inquired timidly after two barrels of mead, and paid up inside without making eye contact. When he emerged, there was no sign of the gang, and he heaved a sigh of relief.

A bar help hooked two barrels onto his yoke, and he staggered back down towards the cottage. At the edge of town, he heard low-pitched murmurs and high-pitched giggles, then the steady crunching of gravel underfoot as they all left the neat cobblestones of Main Street. Crap.

Those teenagers had been lying in wait for him. What could he do? He wouldn't be expected to fight as he guessed it was a big no-no hereabouts for slaves to defend themselves. He heard them talking in low tones, their voices growing more distinct as they gained on him. Just as the gravel path turned to compacted dirt, John stopped, sighed deeply, then set the yoke down carefully so as not to spill the mead. He turned towards them, looking at them direct in the hope they might see his own humanity if they looked into his eyes. Big mistake.

"Just... just trying to do my job here."

He stretched his arms out sideways in supplication whereupon they rushed him.

...

Ettifah watched out the window for Chon to return. It was nearing twilight. There was no sign of her defiant slave. And he'd left around noon. Stupid boy. She couldn't leave the loaves unattended in the oven to go in search of him, so she busied herself with making and wrapping butter pats and cheese slices. Then, there he was. Staggering down the path. Drunk! He was drunk! He'd probably spent the entire change. Oh, what a wicked boy he was. She opened the window, and yelled at him.

"Prop the yoke behind the shed, and the mead inside it," she yelled as she dolloped silberry jam from a large earthenware jar into a small travel one. "I should take my riding crop to you for this, but I'm too busy baking for us all. I'll... speak to you on the morrow. We set off at dawn."

She watched as he nodded, mouthed 'On it' as was his wont, did as he was told, then she went back to fussing over her baking. She heard the front door creak open, but kept her back to him, ignoring him, and heard him bang into the door frame of his room. She heard him crash to the floor, and smiled. Served him right. Then she noticed it. One flour-covered drammel on her table. Her change. She took a lantern into his room, curious now.

Chon lay prone half on and half off his mattress. He hadn't even removed his day wear. He normally slept in nothing more than those so-called bocksurz of his. They were his wash and wear clothing item of choice, and something she couldn't train him out of despite thwacking his nice tight behind for not accepting any other underwear from her or even accepting no underwear. He would rinse them out at twilight with a towel draped around his middle, set them carefully over the fireguard, stare at the fire, watch steam rise from his bocksurz until it rose no more, then don them once more come midnight.

She eased herself down to him, brought the lantern to his face, and gasped.

"Oh, no. No! Who did this to you? Tell me!" She poked his shoulder. No response. She flipped him onto his back.

The poor boy had been soundly beaten. He had one black eye and a split lip. There were grazes along his cheekbones. She lifted both hands, turning them over to check the backs and palms. No cuts on his knuckles. He'd known not to fight back, for which she was grateful, although by rights she should have warned him. She'd forgotten about his lack of contact with the world outside her cottage and a handful of neighboring farms. She held the lantern to his torso, and saw deep bruising there and around his upper arms. He'd clearly been held upright, and punched repeatedly in his ribs and belly.

"Chon? Tell me you yet live, and spare an old lady."

To her relief Chon opened a single glazed eye to a mere slit. "You called me John. S'm'name. Don' wear it out. C'n'I have... s'm'water? Mead'd... do.. if... isn'...'ny water. I didn'... spill'ny. 'S'in'a... shed... "

Then he let out a deep sigh, and closed the one eye, his arms slamming to his sides. Ettifah held her breath, and waited. He no longer stirred, but the rise and fall of his chest was reassuring. She hauled him further onto his mattress, and removed his day wear for him.

Ettifah felt him all over, checking for injuries, but soon found herself deriving pleasure from feeling his firm body instead of ogling it or whacking it as she usually did. His long neck, the hollow of his throat, his broad chest, firm belly – that made him shift in his sleep – she froze for a moment, then she ran a hand down his flanks, telling herself she was merely making sure he was not badly hurt.

She ran a hand down his thighs, along the length of his long, sinuous arms, feeling the fine hairs there, marveling at how they glowed golden in the lamplight against his deep tan. She brushed his dark hair back from his temple, and ran her fingers over those odd offworld ears of his. Yes, she knew he'd had to have arrived somehow from offworld since the Wraith hadn't graced Skojo with their presence her entire lifetime, and he bore a feeding mark not a slave mark. She'd never mentioned it to her Sebby lest he let the man go free. She was, of course, prepared to free him, just not until she was pushing up the frellies.

She went back to his long legs, finishing up at those long, thin feet. He twitched and moaned as her fingers circled one bony ankle. His right. It was swollen. Sprained, but not broken. She'd checked his entire body, front and back, brushing lightly over his ample manhood beneath those bocksurz he held so dear. She slapped a poultice on his ankle, and bound it up for him. She dug something sharp out of his heel on his other foot using a kitchen knife, and slapped some salve in place. She then dabbed his face clean for him and dripped some water into his open mouth, knowing he would swallow reflexively if she rubbed either side of his throatbox. She ran her fingers over his full lips and along his stubbled chin, and stroked his hair once more. She then rubbed one earlobe between her thumb and forefinger, then she did the same with the other, though she could not think why she had felt the need to check his ears. They were neither cut nor swollen. She told herself she was well within her rights to check finally if the ears on her property had been surgically altered. She could detect no scarring to indicate such an occurrence, though she checked both ears once more. Twice more. Just to make sure. Ettifah rubbed more poultice over his belly, feeling the fine, perfect swirl of dark hairs around his navel, and the unidirectional ones below.

There was nothing more she could do for the boy bar check on him should she wake up in the night to use her chamber pot. She was too tired to wait up staring at him as she often did. Her fingers tingled from the feel of him. This night would be an incongruous admixture of both delicious dreams and nightmares for her as she seared the memory of his perfect body into her mind, even his musky, masculine scent, but it most likely meant nothing but more nightmares for him.

She had no right to feel this way at her age, but this handsome young man in the prime of his life had come to her in her dotage, and he was her slave after all. And she had enjoyed taking her crop to him. But of course only when he needed it. Then again, Ettifah had just added even more to his catalog of abuse should he recall any of what had just transpired. If only she had been given him when she was younger, with her own firm, tall and slender body, glorious long brown waves, huge blue eyes, long legs, trim waist, pouty lips and full, nubile breasts. He would surely have lusted after her, taken her of his own free will, and probably even begged her to beat him. But not like this. His face was battered and bruised. This way he wasn't quite as pretty. It wasn't quite how she liked them.

She briefly considered removing his bocksurz, and rinsing them out for him.

...

Ettifah cautiously checked on Chon at first light, but his room was empty in more ways than one. It lacked not only the scent and tinge of his physical presence, but also the brief touch of his soul. This was it. He was leaving her. She knew it; he knew it.

She dropped his fresh clothing on his mattress - black travel clothes of a lace-up tunic and breeches that wouldn't show the taint of dirt or even blood for that matter. She also placed a peaked cap on top of the pile. To hide his ears. Just in case. For all that slaves were diverse on Skojo, he was beyond unusual, and she didn't know if he might be wanted, those ears of his being a dead giveaway. No, it was best to keep him plain as maybe.

Ettifah peeked through the curtains, gained the front door, then stepped over the threshold into the first rays of the rising sun. Yes, she had had her house built with the perfect orientation some fifty years ago, and had never once considered moving, certainly not into town, what with all those young ruffians. The youth of today! She yawned and stretched. Yes, she might consider moving if they brought back the draft and the birch. Especially the birch. That would suit her up to the sky.

Chon had readied the bindy and buggy, and had placed one barrel of mead in the back. He sat hunched in the driver's seat, occasionally rubbing his arms and legs with a ferocity most likely born of panic and confusion, fumbling under his regular green vest and pants with a frown, and wincing whenever he touched his face. Ettifah steeled herself, and addressed him firmly.

"Go inside and change," she growled. "I want you to look halfway decent. For a very, very welcome change." She had to make him think she was still mad at him, and that she had played no part in his misery. Not that it mattered. He was a slave after all, though not a very convincing one. For all that, he avoided eye contact at long last, and was duly taciturn. Chon had learned the hard way, as did all who were not born to this life.

Chon slid off the buggy like dripping candle wax. He was either on a typical slave go-slow, or was still stiff and hurting. She suspected it was a mixture of both, given his surly expression and the occasional wince. She followed him inside, and busied herself with packing the rest of that picnic for them all, fumbling over napkins and cutlery, condiments, and flurrying about the kitchen. She wouldn't look at him. Couldn't. She readied her travel bags and fetched him a sleeping roll and an old sweater of her Sebby's in case it grew cold. Autumn was in the air, and Peely Point was at a higher elevation, plus it took the brunt of sea breezes.

"Might give you up today. In Peely," she said, testing the well water. Guilt was making her think of getting rid of him, this temptation, and she didn't think her Sebby would let her free him, since this wouldn't be about honoring her written will while she still drew breath. She knew he'd insist on making some money. Sebby wasn't stupid. He was aware this slave was exceptional in looks and would fetch a pretty drammel. He probably even suspected he was an offworlder, though they never broached the subject. This decision-making was so tiresome!

"Thought you might," he replied coldly.

He knew!

"Everyone ditches me eventually. Story of my life."

He knew not.

"Or uses me."

He knew!

"Place my luggage in the back of the buggy, boy."

"Yes, mistress."

"I have never once asked you to call me anything but Ettifah!"

"Seemed fitting." He stood defiant in the doorway of his bedroom, his green eyes dark and glowering.

"Go," she growled.

Chon slouched lazily against the doorpost, his smile suddenly sly, his eyes glinting and full of mischief.

"On the plus side, I look more like an actual slave now than the consort to some batty old succubus," he mumbled before turning tail.

"Go!" she screeched after him, "Or so help me, I'll beat you silly after all!"

He knew what she had done.

...


	9. Chapter 9

A/N - in which Strey whumps Sheppard with a feather duster... XD

...

John squirmed in the driver's seat, feeling himself being gently rocked by the steady trot of the two bindies, and the rhythmic crash of waves to his left as they meandered along via the coastal route. The trip to Peely Point had been a grueling one so far. For one, he'd just been beat by a gang of hormonal teenagers, and was still spitting blood from his split lip. For two, the road was bumpy, which aggravated the most recent welts on his ass. Three? His bum leg ached with the whole change in the climate thing.

There was a four. Bugs. The mosquitoes here were as large as dragonflies back on... back on... Earth? Yeah, Earth. That sounded familiar, though he didn't think it meant home. He slapped at the insects, but they were nothing compared to... compared to... He ran his fingers over two raised bumps on the left side of his neck just above his collar and right near his jugular. Heck, right on his jugular. Now those he knew weren't slave marks. Not showy enough. And he sure as hell hadn't nicked himself shaving.

The bindies knew the route well, and so he just held onto the reins with one hand, clutching his sore belly with the other, and pondering on his lot, life-sucking, pain-inducing bugs aside. Ettifah was going to sell him, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it. Not that it mattered. He was usually pretty much buck-naked and his ass was endlessly sore from one excuse after another. She and the sheriff were droning on, discussing the pros and cons of keeping him, like he was some ol' dog they were thinking of either selling on or shooting.

He couldn't remember ever being bought or sold before, just tormented.

Tortured.

His body was a mass of faded or fading scars. And a few new scabs. There were fresh injuries on his face. He could feel one eye puffy and slightly closed, and he could taste blood on his bottom lip. It was hard not to constantly run his tongue over it, or nibble on it. It was even harder to sit upright. Great. He just wanted to hole up, curl up, and lick his wounds. Once or twice, he almost fell asleep. He could feel himself nodding, his energy waning. If he passed out, he would most likely fall between the bindies, and end up trampled by hooves, and or run over by cartwheels. Damn! This was supposed to be his opportunity to scout for a means to escape!

John inhaled deeply, grabbed his flask, and splashed water into his face. He had to stay awake though it was a tough call. He took off the dumb cap, then poured more water over his head, rubbing it into his scalp to cool off. It dripped from his cowlicks down the back of his neck, and into what stood for the collar part of his tunic. He shook his head. Yeah, like some ol' dog.

Ettifah fell silent, her conversation cut off in mid-sentence. She was undoubtedly eyeing him up. She seemed to like him wet. She'd often hosed him down when he worked outside on those searing hot days. Apart from feeling her rheumy old eyes boring into him, mentally tearing off the last of his clothing, that had felt so good.

"Put your cap back on, boy. We're nearing Peely Point."

John merely grunted in response, but did as Ettifah ordered. Funny how she wanted him clothed just now, though he had to concede that hiding his ears sounded like a plan.

The incline steepened, and the bindies slowed accordingly, ducking their long necks, and nickering in complaint under the strain. Then – there it was. Peely Point. Some escarpment upon which sprawled a small gray city. It looked like a wart on a giant, bulbous nose. The road leading up had been cleared of trees and bushes, and was lined with gaudy merchant tents interspersed with gray bivouacs. So, some military presence then. Great. On closer inspection, the inner city buildings were made of a sparkling black and white granite, the outer ones wood. They pulled up next to an imposing building whereupon Sheriff Sebillian Knuckledragger Blerrybuck The Third dismounted, announced with a brief wave of one hand something about meeting up at their usual inn around sundown, and charged off.

Ettifah poked John in the ass with that fucking riding crop. He was so sore and sensitive just now he wanted to snap it in two. Maybe his next owner would thwack him on another part of his body and leave his ass alone. He'd appreciate at least that much. Maybe he'd even find a way outta here. Crawl his way out if need be. He found himself reaching over his shoulders to feel the scars there. Seemed that was where they used to hit him, whoever_ they_ were. He couldn't imagine being dealt so much in one go. Yep, his shoulders had borne the brunt of abuse, and now it was the turn of his ass.

Something niggled at the back of his mind. Something to do with sticks. Twin sticks, coming down on his inner arms and the backs of his thighs time and time again. The woman with the warm brown eyes. He wondered if he'd fought back ever. It had hurt, he remembered, but it was a good kind of hurt - the kind that toughened you up. He also remembered kneeling with his back to her. She'd held those sticks to his exposed, collar-free neck. It was a fair fight. It was a fair fight! Whuh? Who was she? He once knelt before... a Wraith queen? Then he remembered the vampire dude on the pub sign, and his hand flew to the mark on his chest again. John frowned. Was he beginning to remember? Took him long enough.

"Drive on, boy. We must head to the mushroom caves. Go left, right, right, left, right, then right again." She tapped him on his left shoulder to steer him, and he in turn steered the bindies. At least she wasn't prodding his butt cheeks. Or thwacking them, though he braced himself, clenching them tight.

After some minutes winding in and out of narrow, picturesque, cobbled streets, she tapped him on his right shoulder. John sighed, and steered the bindies right. Before long, the streets had a coating of russet sand, twirled around by a welcome sea breeze, and they ended up in a bay at the bottom of some sheer cliffs. He could go left or right along a beach, but she rapped him on the top of his head. He pulled the bindies to a halt, grinding his teeth in irritation at the onslaught. He wanted to tell her not to mess with the cowlicks.

"Where to now?" he asked flatly.

"We eat first, then we walk to the caves. Bring the hamper."

Ettifah parked herself at a nice, benign wooden picnic bench on the sand, and stared up the length of the beach in both directions.

"Hm."

"Hm?" he asked with a single raised eyebrow as he plunked the hamper on the bench. Ettifah snorted.

"You would do well to remember not to make any further utterance in public, Chon, since you clearly haven't quite learnt your lesson. But I will tell you this much. Peely Point is never this busy, not even on a market day. Something is very much amiss."

John looked about him. He had no idea what the norm was for this place, but yeah, he had to agree. The place was teeming with more bustling, official-looking types and military types than beach goers or tourists, and they were all headed east. The balance was somehow wrong. He noticed Ettifah was frowning.

"Don't tell me the caves are thataway." He indicated 'thataway' with a nod of his head, where the bulk of the suits and soldiers were.

"Indeed they are. There is either a rush on mushrooms, be they healing, culinary or recreational, or something has happened. I have never seen so many outsiders here before even at this time of year." Ettifah brightened, and resorted to ogling him. Which stunk, but not as much as it used to in the early days of his servitude to her. "Well, let us eat our fill now that it is noonbreak," she added, "and we shall find out in due course."

John duly unpacked the various wrapped dishes, and spread them out across the bench. The food was great and plentiful as usual, but it soon settled into a clump in his still sore belly, threatening to make a reappearance. Her blerrymeat pie was always mouthwateringly delicious – he would jab it with a fork, and gravy would gush out, whereupon he'd grab a spoon and shovel it in his mouth. Her purple ketchup made from those plummy tomatoey things he had tended and picked himself was to die for, though right now, he felt like actually dying. He washed his meal down with a jug of mead, hoping he was essentially flushing it through his system. This sucked.

Ettifah rapped him on his forearm since he was facing away from her, lost in his own thoughts and clearly not acting mindlessly attentive or servile enough. He clenched his fists, yet took that as his cue to pack up. He reloaded the buggy, then feeling acid rise in his gullet, he turned away in alarm, grabbed for the nearby cobblestone wall, braced his arms against it, and heaved his meal up and over, decorating the wall with his lunch. John sank to his knees, and rested his forehead against a clean patch of cold stones, soothing himself even as he panted heavily.

Before long, scavenging gulls and crows swooped in, screeching and cawing and vying with crabs for the biggest bits. Together they cleared it all up, ruining his impromptu art project. A blur of white and black, they looked like manic chess pieces. Chess? He played chess! Whoa. Another memory. It made him reel.

He looked up miserably at a tap on his shoulder. Ettifah. She handed him a flask of mead, a rare look of sympathy and compassion on her face. He swigged from the flask, swilled out his mouth, spit the drink out, then drank his fill, diluting whatever was left in his abused gut, which now growled with reignited hunger.

John belched, and Ettifah laughed like a spirited young girl. She handed him a chunk of bread, which he forced down. It must've sopped up the mead and whatever acid remained in his stomach, and he felt a little better. She thumbed over her shoulder to show they needed to head out, and John put up a shaky forefinger, hoping she'd understand he'd need a minute. She did.

He staggered and she strolled right along the beach, him in the water, her just above the shore line. The wet sand felt great under his bare feet, and he found himself checking the waves, looking around for... what? Something to take him out to sea. Something. Anything but this unhappy walk to the mushroom caves and to whatever else loomed in the vicinity that was attracting so much attention, though there wasn't much to see other than a mess of honking rocks blocking their view to whatever lay beyond. Ettifah snapped her fingers to have him rejoin her as they neared the rocks, and they zigzagged in and out. Beyond the tourist-repelling rock screen lay another stretch of beach, and -

- a huge, metallic, block-shaped vessel surrounded by more suits and soldiers. John had the strangest feeling it had something to do with him, especially as he somehow found himself suddenly praying it wasn't wrecked beyond repair. He didn't dare rush up to it. Instead he bowed his head even more, pulled the cap lower, and studied it out from under the peak. It wasn't remotely aerodynamic, and it didn't look fit to float either. Weird. He felt a strange longing in the pit of his stomach which threatened to reignite his belly cramps.

"Those men are officials. They sailed in from Skojo City, and that means trouble. They never come here unless something is brewing. We're too provincial to warrant their scrutiny. Wait by that rock, boy. I will inquire. I just might need to get past the thing to reach those caves above high tide over yonder. I might need to secure us a pass." And off she scurried, her voluminous skirts flapping in a brisk sea breeze like a tangle of kites.

John needed no further excuse or reason to park his weary bones against said rock. He waited. And waited. The sun warmed him through and through, hampered only by the breeze, which whistled in and out of nearby rocks, lulling him. Keeping still relieved his recent injuries, and before long he felt himself drifting off.

He was woken up by a sudden chill, and found he'd ended up sprawled out flat on his back, a shadow blocking the sun, which was by now pretty much dunking itself in the sea. A tall man. No, several men. In some dark, heavy uniform much like the sheriff's. John was hauled to his feet by two of them.

"You, slave. State your name."

_Here we go again._

John stared at his bare feet. His bare, non-slave feet. He found himself digging his toes in the sand to hide them. He had to get this right. He didn't need these official dudes on his case right now, not when he was so close to answers, good or bad.

"Indy Blerrybuck. Sir."

Your mistress here tells me you were found washed up on a beach over in Blerry." The man pushed his face into his own, then reached up with his right hand, and crushed his cheeks together. Thankfully they were the ones actually on his face. For a change. "You have a strange mien about you. Do you perchance know of this vessel?"

"No. Sir." And it was the truth. He couldn't remember squat apart from random, disjointed memories. But – there was something else about his feet. He wasn't used to going barefoot. At least not all the time. He always went barefoot on the beach! And – he surfed! John felt something else rise from the pit of his stomach, and it wasn't acid; it was exhilaration. Joy.

"State the nature of your business here."

"Whuh? I am to help my mistress gather mushrooms in a cave near here, is all." John shrugged.

He let his eyes roam towards the waves. They were perfect. The man glanced over his shoulder. For some reason, the man let go of him.

"After which you are to be sold, or so I have been given to understand."

So she really meant it. So much for freeing him. Crap. And who the hell was this creep anyways?

"I guess." John bowed his head further, and rubbed the back of his neck. He struggled against making a break for it. But he couldn't think of anywhere to run to, or of anyone who might care enough to take him in. Thoughts of places and nameless faces only gave him a sharp pain behind his eyes and a lump in his throat. But how did he get here? Did it have anything to do with the vessel? He would have to sneak back here after dark. Check it out.

Images came to him in the sand. Of boards. Winter ones, summer ones. Bare feet on a surfboard. On a skateboard. Covered feet on a snowboard. Skis. He was wrenched out of his reverie by a sharp slap across his face. John gasped as he jerked his head up, stiffened, then remembered to hang his head low, and slouch.

"Your slave is dull-witted, Mistress Blerrydoe. I suggest you beat him more soundly, though I yet consider confiscating him from you for questioning. In fact, why don't you present him with his papers to me at noon on the morrow. Good day to you."

John knew that wasn't a request. He stared after his assailant's retreating back, though the man threw a hopeful glance out to sea. Yep, surf's up, dude. He watched as he man rounded the rocks, whereupon Ettifah dragged him by his shirt sleeve. She rammed him into one of the rocks, waggled the crop in his face, and tapped his nose with it.

"That. Was. The. Prefect!" she spat. "There is something about you and that vessel. It has something to do with you!" She shook with rage, her riding crop quivering at her side. "At least he and his men are leaving, though I must obey his orders on the morrow!"

John squirmed, and thanked the stars his ass was pressed against the rock. She whacked him twice across his face instead. Right where he'd just been struck by the damn prefect. Enough already! He grabbed her wrist, yanked the thing out of her hand, and threw it down, his chest heaving with fury. He was so sick of hurting all the time. And his life was clearly about to become even more miserable.

"Bitch!"

"Chon!"

Instead of beating him further, she slumped. Into him, putting her hands around his waist, her wrinkly old lips attempting pouty. John wanted to hurl.

"I don't know who or what the hell you think you are, lady, but this has gone on long enough! I'm a free man! I know it, you know it, Baby Boy the sheriff knows it, and now this prefect surfer dude knows it."

"I just wanted – "

John gasped. Maybe proximity to the vessel was making him talk this way. Talk back. Make plans. Then again, he was pretty sure what she really wanted even if she denied it. But there was no way he could... do that. That would be pushing it.

"I'm screwed either way. So, have me arrested already. Or let me go."

"Prefect Ezly would confiscate you before the auction."

Auction. Crap. John chewed on his split bottom lip, tasting blood once more.

"Go now, Chon," she said softy, fluttering her sparse eyelashes." Go to your vessel. I free you. I implore you to think upon me fondly, and had I been younger – "

"I don't think so!" he yelled, as he shoved her scraggy arms aside, and chopped the air in front of him in emphasis. She looked up at him, teary-eyed. Suddenly she was... Lauren? Lorraine? No, Larrin, aged by a Wraith. Despite himself, he grabbed her by the shoulders, gave her a peck on the forehead, and bolted.

As his bare feet took him downwind and towards the vessel, he thought he heard her bawling like a baby. He refused to look back. He recalled more of the Traveler woman who had once reveled in his discomfort, how she had wanted him almost as much as he wanted her, yet teased him mercilessly, flaunting her voluptuous body, then using it against him, taking him down. John shuddered.

His cap blew off and out to sea, but he just couldn't slow his pace or make a detour to go fetch it, and it was too late to worry about his ears being exposed, though he watched the cap take flight, land, become sodden, then drown.

His ears. What about them. Huh. Maybe his they were normal for his people, whoever they were. Maybe his ears were a means to identify his people or his clan. Identify Davy. Yep, his ears were a clue. He didn't have much else to go on.

There was one more important thing he now knew, and that drove him on more than anyone or anything else. He used to fly. And it had something to do with that vessel. The Traveler woman had captured him in one just like it. He'd been... flying solo. He'd been returning from a mission! He was - a pilot!

John was remembering more and more! Now that felt great, though he wished he could dredge up a good memory. Oh, yeah. Yeah! There was something about that mission and it being a tropical paradise. Something about the people there being 'friendly'...

As he neared the vessel – a... puddle jumper! – he looked around for guards. All he spied was a lone fisherman. Perhaps it was a lone fisherman who had discovered the jumper, and had reported it to the authorities. This side of the rocks wasn't tourist territory after all. Said fisherman was thankfully too focused on unhooking his latest catch to notice him, and John breathed a sigh of relief. He watched as the fisherman tossed his catch in a basket floating in a nearby rockpool, and John half-remembered leisurely catching fish back in the day, sometimes letting them go, and sometimes cooking them up on a barbecue. It was a bitter-sweet memory.

The prefect and his merry men had all left. Everyone had left by now, and all he could hear was the crashing of waves. This was too good to be true. He slowed his pace to a steady jog to look like he was just passing by, just in case, then risked a glance over at the jumper. The starboard side was presenting. He slowed to a casual stroll, approached the jumper cautiously, resting a hand on the hull and finding some comfort there as the metal seemed to keen beneath his palms. It was a wrench to let go even for a few seconds, but let go he did. Then he moved to the back.

_Please, don't let her be damaged beyond repair..._

The rear hatch was mangled. The windshield had blown out. His jumper - his jumper! - was littered with debris. The port drive pod was... crushed. John fell to his knees, and let out an audible sob.

John stared at his ship, willing her by his very presence to suddenly become whole again. For him. She refused. He hauled himself upright, took in several deep breaths, and ran his hand through his hair, then rubbed the back of his neck as he struggled to gather himself.

He paced around the perimeter, scrubbing his face with one hand in frustration, still willing the jumper to mend herself for him like maybe she was just playing hard to get. He dashed inside, slid into the pilot's seat, visualizing a co-pilot, and two others in the seats behind them. Company. His team? He knew now without a doubt they were the ones who'd tortured him. He could dwell on that later. Meanwhile, the console was dead, and John cried out in anguish and frustration. Yep, bitterness could take a back seat for now.

The jumper had crashed halfway over the tide mark. It had skidded to a halt at some thirty-five degree angle, the nose pointing upwards. Limpets had encrusted the lower part of the sloping floor and walls part way in from about a foot high down, and there were piles of seaweed here and there, but beyond that it was pretty much clean though a tad sandy. The console was gritty to the touch. Boxes had been thrown forward out of reach of the sea and its denizens; the rest of them had been ruined either by seawater or crabs. John dodged those. Sure, his feet had toughened up since he'd gone barefoot now for pretty much half a year, but he'd seen the size of some of those babies, and he reckoned some of them could nip off a pinky toe with one clack of its claws.

"Shoo! Scat!" he hissed. "Come on, guys!" John threw his arms sideways in a sweeping gesture, and tried to look scary. The crabs didn't obey - the little bastards - so he threw a torn-open MRE at them, which sent them scurrying to bolt holes, then scurrying back out to forage for tidbits.

He could hear the rhythmic pounding and scrunching of several booted feet approaching. He hunkered down in the pilot's seat, bowed his head, and stared at the patch of floor between his feet. This had been his ship, his, and it was wrecked. There was no way off the island. No way home, wherever that was. He imagined the bent hatch closing, the windshield mending itself, the drive pod firing, and the console lighting up. He imagined himself taking off, leaving this place far behind.

John slumped over the console, feeling the fight drain from him. He was exhausted anyways. He rested his head on his crossed hands. He was out of options here. No wait!Crabs! Bolt holes! Those mushroom caves! They had to be near. He could hole up like a crab while he thought this through. There might be a way to fix the jumper. Maybe he could fire it up, slip through a gate. Maybe he could... cloak? Maybe if he strapped himself to the console he might not be ejected due to wind and momentum despite the blown-out windshield and mangled rear hatch and the dinged drive pod. He could use... duct tape? He'd spied a roll of it in the water. So long as he stayed clear of space 'gates. He had to stay positive. Maybe just by hiding out near his wrecked jumper, he might regain more and more of his lost memory, and come up with a plan.

John snatched up a... tac vest, and donned it in an instant, though it pulled on an array of scabs across his shoulders, newly reopened after his run-in with those teenagers, causing him to hiss. The vest also chafed some lingering scabs on his flanks. Ow!

Mentally shoving his discomfort aside, he located a couple of canteens, and shook them. They were both full. The chances of coming through this were on the up and up. He found a handful of power bars, some intact MREs, and a flashlight, which he hooked to his vest. He could come out of the cave around twilight or just before dawn and raid the jumper, maybe even fix it. He could also catch and eat some of those godzilla-crabs before they could catch and eat him. This all seemed right. He was beginning to feel a bit like his old self, especially as his tunic and breeches were black. Yeah, he wore black once, he believed, or even pretty much all the time way back when. He was The Man In Black. He was The Guy. They could all eat his dust.

John slid over the console and through the windshield, scraping his bare arms and shins on rough metal, and bolted with his cache towards the nearby caves. The sharp stones and seashells above high tide cut his feet as he ran, but at least he wasn't leaving footprints in the sand.

Then he remembered. He'd left footprints leading up to the jumper! Damn!

He ran back, dived back inside, rolled over the console, landing against the pilot's seat, then sprang up. He dashed out through the hatch into the sea, hopefully making his pursuers think he'd chosen to take his own life rather than end up captured. He then ran below the shoreline for some ten minutes, grateful he was wearing black and that it was rapidly growing dark. It was getting harder and harder to distinguish sea from sand from sky. He then turned inland, quickly wiping away his footprints behind him with a clutch of stiff, dried seaweed.

Thoughts of inertial dampeners and heads-up displays and cloaking devices and weapons arrays and evasive turkey sandwich dispensers made his head spin as he gained the cliff face, then doubled back towards the caves. He suddenly felt like his head was splitting open with the onrush of fresh information, and he stumbled, dropping his supplies as he reached a cave entrance in the ambient glow of sunset some five minutes later.

He faceplanted on a soft bed of puffballs, scaring up a cloud of red dust. Dust? No, spores. Mushroom spores. Crap. He crawled deeper into the cave, dragging his haul with him, and came to a halt only when he hit a wall. John scrabbled into a seated position, pressed his back against the wall, and the decision to either rest or get some actual sleep was taken away from him as he felt himself spinning and tumbling in silent swirling eddies of gray with flashing neon dots. Just before he allowed himself to pass out, he wondered whether these particular mushrooms were of the edible kind. He'd forgotten to ask Ettifah about the damn things. How to identify them. There were two types. Or was that three? Crap.

He hoped that little oversight wasn't about to jump up and bite him on his still sore ass.

...

They came for him sometime during the night, wakening him with their heavy-footed movements. No need for stealth. Safety in numbers. He stiffened then stilled, and almost quit breathing, his heart pounding in his chest, threatening to escape his rib cage via his gullet. His churning, bread and mead-filled guts threatened make their own exit fore and aft.

At first all he saw were dark, writhing shadows in the depths of the cave, milling and circling, though the pattern of their movements told him they were moving in on him in ever decreasing circles. His first instinct was to run back to the puddle jumper, bowling them over on his bid for freedom, but he was surrounded. He must have slept deeply, let his guard down.

_Way to screw up, John!_

They could see him or smell him or hear him. Maybe all three. So this was it. He'd expected this some day. This was how he was going to be taken out. He wasn't going to let them capture him alive, string him up, wrap him up in some cocoon, and feed on him at their leisure in their putrid lair.

He shucked off his deer-in-the-headlights paralysis, leapt up, adopting a defensive stance, girding himself on shaky legs. He raised his fists ready to fight them off, fight off anyone or anything that chose to take him on. They'd better believe it. He wished he'd had a torch to ward them off like they were a pack of wolves.

He could hear their manic snickering. Then just as he could see the whites of their eyes, they rushed him. He fought, of course, bringing down as many as he could, smashing in skulls and snapping long, pale fingers, even lopping off a few with his k-bar. He ripped off their crazy hair, tore at their dumb outfits, gouged out eyeballs, and they weren't any more human underneath. Their skin was sickly pale, their clothing, hanging off them now in shreds, was garish even in the first light of sunup.

They bared their sharp teeth, raised their mawed hands as if they were about to feed, and descended as one, slamming him to the floor. He sagged, and awaited untold agony as hands smacked into and suckered onto every exposed part of his body, but instead of feeding on him, they bound him, and hauled him out into the open, dragging him over jagged rocks and seashells interspersed with the plush carpeting of innocent-looking mushrooms.

He'd rather be taken out by the Wraith than this. Anything but this.

John screamed. He hated clowns. Always had, always would.

They stuffed him in the back of some old jalopy of a Volkswagen, honking horns the entire trip, the radio playing canned laughter. John sat in the back seat, rigid and wide-eyed. Even if they hadn't cuffed him to the oh shit handle, he didn't think he could move anyways. The car went around in circles a few times, a bunch of clowns fell out, performed a few dumb tricks involving pails of water and seemingly endless prat falls, then clambered back in, only to fall out the other side a few times. It took a while to reach their destination.

Clown Central.

They strung him up and left him to dangle from a low-slung trapeze in a jail cell right in the middle of a circus tent, awaiting whatever fate they had in store for him. He didn't care to get back in touch with his body, to orient himself, but it had other ideas that didn't include him. All his fresh injuries protested, but above it all his arms screamed bloody murder from his wrists to his shoulder blades, and struggling to breathe was a bitch.

He'd imagined a clown cocoon to be warm and inviting – soft and silken and not made of barb wire, and not fucking freezing, unless he was in cold storage per clown cuisine, though food losing blood didn't make any sense at all. He'd also expected to end up all curled up in a fetal position, not stretched out like this. Without the security of false comfort he provided it for himself, and began to hum, though it was hard to reach the rich baritone notes of a song about a solitary man. He reckoned he was probably a tenor.

"I'll be what I am," he crooned. "Scooby... Dooby Doo." Close enough.

"Is that your real name?"

John refused to open his eyes. They'd have to sew his eyelids open before he would look at any single one of them.

"Yeah. Scooby Doo. Dooby's my middle name. I only use it on official documents, mind," he replied with an emphatic nod. "It was meant to be Doby after my maternal grampa, but it got mispelled on my birth certificate, and there was just no fixing it. Bureaucracy can be such a bitch, doncha think? My social security card on the other hand - " He shifted against the barb wire, and tried to touch the floor with his toes. No dice. So, he was to be left hanging then, any movement on his part drawing more blood, which he felt trickle down his wrists, down his back, and into his... boxers.

"To my mind it does not ring true, slave."

"No dumber than your names hereabouts, chief."

_Slave? Crap._

John sighed. Yep, he realized where he was. He was most likely strung up before the prefect himself in the local jail. John opened his eyes only to slam them shut again.

"Aaagh!"

"Uncomfortable?"

_No shit, Sherlock!_

Or was that Ronald McDonald? Or maybe even It?

He was surrounded by pierrots and harlequins, whiteface clowns with baggy spotted costumes with whizzing bow ties and flowers in their lapels that most likely squirted acid and not water, and even some dark Jokers with Glasgow smiles. The Jokers were lined up like a firing squad, and all were holding custard pies. He could just about make out through blurred vision the bars of a regular jail cell, and lithographed wanted posters on the flaking adobe walls. Beyond that was the endless, undulating canvas of a large tent, though it was painted – all three hundred and sixty degrees of it apart from a tent flap - with cacti and rocks like a western movie backdrop. It was almost like being in the old west, except the tethered ponies just outside the jail were bindies sporting plumes, and the tumbleweed was a myriad midget acrobats.

Okay. Okay. He could snap out of this. This wasn't real. It was the mushroom spores. Had to be. He'd stumbled upon the so-called recreational ones, and was on a seriously bad trip. Unless he'd really ended up on clown planet. That or Hell.

Prefect Ronald Ezly McDonald came at him grinning, his bow tie whizzing furiously. He popped a feather duster out of his sleeve, and waved it in front of his face. The clown touched the damn thing to his chest, his belly, his armpits, his shoulder blades, the small of his back, even the backs of his knees, whereupon John screamed. It hurt! Oh, how it hurt. John thrashed, and he could feel more of his life's blood trickling away as the bunting-bedecked barb wire wrapped around his torso randomly sliced his bare skin and dug into his bare flesh with his every move.

He really was on clown planet. He'd come all this way to escape them, only to find this was where the bastards had originated from. Gah!Was this a moment of lucidity? He was finally remembering? He'd shut all this out?

_Yes, John. Yes!_

_This is the real world!_

The next thing John knew was how his shoulders felt even more wrenched out of their sockets, and how his hips, knees and ankles were beginning to yell at him. He felt a tug on his feet. He looked down to see two Jokers taking a leg each – what was with that?! - and after some jerking and tugging and fumbling, attaching thick dark bands with an array of upturned hooks around his ankles. Then they hooked something heavy-looking up and over right at his heels. Weights? They were attaching weights? Oh! Ow! Ow!

_Please st-stop..._

"Tell me of the ship."

"I don't know anything." And he didn't. Much.

More weights. Near his inner ankles now. He could feel an ache deep within his hips and his shoulders.

"Tell me of the pilot."

"I don't remember." He thought of flying.

Even more weights. Near his outer ankles. His legs were about to dislocate along with his arms. Oh, God. They were slowly pulling him apart!

John shook his head, flicking sweat everywhere, and clammed up. He felt the electrical surge of that feather duster, he felt his shoulders pop, he felt his knees pop, he felt his ankles pop, his wrists, his hips. He screamed, but refused to speak, refused to open his eyes again.

He swung there, stinging and aching all over. He vaguely heard Ronald McDonald declare that no-one would endure all this without telling all or at least giving away something to save their own hide, and that he was most likely a lunatic being transported to the insane asylum in Skojo City, that the ship had malfunctioned, and the pilot, the one they really wanted to get their hands on, had been cast out to sea. That suited John just fine.

He thought he could hear sobbing. He imagined a sad bag lady clown, her mouth painted on downturned, black tears upon a dirty face, giant mismatched patches with huge stitching on her ragged, voluminous skirts. Ettifah. He heard the rustle of paper, the scratch of a quill, the smell of sealing wax, and the final, resounding stamp of a seal. That sent a shiver throughout.

He knew what was coming up.

The slave auction.

He refused to look at her.

Bitch could have given him his freedom papers way before it all hit the fan.

John floated out of the big top, up, up and away, and landed without even paying in a tiny, rotund, cartoonish, blow-up airplane on a carousel, and he spun round and round. When he grew tired of that he found himself in the seat of a Ferris wheel. And there he stayed, feeling safe, going round and round until the wheel slowly melted, and he crashed to the ground, screaming himself hoarse.

They unraveled him from his spiky bunting, tugged off the six ankle weights, and tied his wrists with rope. He felt sunshine on his body as the full glare of daylight made him clench his eyelids shut He heard gasps from a handful of rubberneckers, and felt himself become airborne as he was thrown into the back of a cart, which then set off, making stops along the way only for other bodies to be piled alongside his.

As he lay there, trembling and pretty much immobile, throbbing from head to toe, he basked in the warmth of the sun, and for as long as it lasted, he'd enjoy the play of sunbeams over his battered body, until at last the cart ground to a halt, and he was thrown into some dark pit. He could smell blood and other unwashed bodies until they were all hosed down, and he could only smell something farmy. Still he didn't move. He couldn't. It hurt too much to even open his eyes. He blocked out the wailing and sobbing and begging from other pathetic scraps of humanity, and lay there feeling sorry for himself in his own world of hurt. He peeked out through his eyelashes to suss out his surroundings. Yep, some kind of holding pen. John sank back into himself, and curled up, protecting his head with his bare arms. As if that would block out heavy thoughts.

He'd never told Mom and Dad what those two clowns had done to him that day when he'd snuck out under the tent flaps in search of a treat. He hadn't understood back then in any case. Those clowns had told him they had free cotton candy ready for him in pink and white and purple and even green right there inside their trailer when he'd asked them where he could go buy some, happily holding up a fistful of nickels. He'd mostly avoided touch ever since. He still flinched to this day.

It was funny what you remembered and what you didn't, what you couldn't, what you shouldn't. Was it really all there inside him as Ettifah had said? The full grown man in him hoped so. The little boy in him prayed not.


	10. Chapter 10

A/N - in which exotic alien warrior princess Francene outbids everyone else at the slave auction, beams a very groggy, badly whumped yet eternally grateful amnesiac Sheppard to her fairy tale castle, more specifically her boudoir with en suite dungeon, and proceeds to mop his fevered brow amongst other, uhm, ministrations... *winks*

...

John had gotten himself a great night's sleep on that softly yielding mattress of springy, memory foam mushrooms, and had awoken refreshed and invigorated. He downed a power bar on the run, washing it down with refreshing, ice cold water from his canteen. He donned his vest, which mercifully didn't hurt to wear any more, checked for any soldiers or passersby in the pre-dawn light, relieved himself against the cliff wall, and jogged in stealth mode towards his jumper, his heart full of hope.

He could do this. Fix the jumper. Take off. Find his way home at last. Find out what had happened. It had all been some misunderstanding, some... misapprehension. He had people who cared.

_We don't leave anyone behind._

Now that was a truth he could hang onto. That and staying positive.

He was in luck. The jumper had miraculously mended itself overnight, and thankfully wasn't teetering on the edge of a precipice or sinking into quicksand. Nothing was cracked, broken, dented or missing. The port drive pod only needed a quick paint job. Whoa. This was too good to be true.

John strode up the ramp, feeling the comfortable, familiar heavy thud of thick rubber on metal reverberate through his feet to his calves to his thighs all the way to his hips. His boots! When had he found those? He'd better tread more softly. He didn't want to draw attention to himself. He slid into the pilot's seat, his right hand resting on his trusty P-90, and -

"Too late, buddy."

_Whuh?_

John whirled around, and gasped. There right behind him in the starboard passenger seat sprawled a huge whiteface clown with a wig of bright orange dreadlocks, a red nose, and snarling, red, overdrawn lips. The clown wore a glitzy, lime green satin jumpsuit with giant red buttons, a red ruff, a tiny red Irish derby with a wilted sunflower tucked in it, and checkered, green and orange over-sized shoes fit to trip over.

In the port passenger seat, arms folded, sat a smug-looking little tramp clown with a receding hairline and thin, down-turned lips, a ruddy nose, a grubby face, and serious five-o'clock shadow. He wore a dusty, baggy, worn-out suit with a train ticket sticking out of the breast pocket, a crushed and tilted bowler hat, and spatted shoes that'd seen mold and mud and puddles alike. His grubby, gloved hands rested on a cane, which he twirled intermittently. The tramp cocked his head, leaned back, eyed him judgmentally, and let out a single 'Hm'.

_Nooo..._

John had to suck it up. He wasn't six-years old any more. He was an adult male. He didn't have to cow to them, beg them to let him go. Go home. Stop doing what they were doing.

"You're not real."

"Guess again, Johnny Boy," the tramp stated in a know-it-all voice.

John eyed the open hatch beyond them. He could do this. Escape. This wasn't the locked door of a circus trailer after all, the latch out of reach of desperate little six-year old hands even when he went on tippy-toes.

Then his exit was blocked by a shadow. It was feminine in shape. John froze.

In danced a petite harlequin in ballet slippers, ballooning pantaloons, and a tight blouse all matchy-matchy in broad checkered panels of a shimmering silver and gold satin. Her face was white, her contrasting black make-up sharp and pristine. She bore a single rhinestone tear below her right eye. She was twirling two matching marrottes.

Jesters on a stick.

MALP on a stick...

_Please..._

John raised his weaponless hands, and flashed an appeasing grin.

_Hey... _

The harlequin raised a single eyebrow, approached him daintily, her eyes fixed on him like he was her prey. She scanned his body menacingly, then promptly smacked him around like she wanted to break all his limbs, his ribs. Heck, even his nuts.

This wasn't a fair fight!

He had nothing to defend himself with!

She beat him steadily with those marrottes until he sank in a crouch to the floor of the puddle jumper, feeling his life's blood drain from his body even as he curled up on one side, as if presenting a smaller target would deflect a blow. Boy, she was strong. Relentless. He tried to protect his head, and yeah, his nuts. He had one arm wrapped around his head, and the other over his groin. The pain became overwhelming, and John felt himself graying out to escape it. He welcomed the respite.

The next thing he knew, he was hanging from a pole that'd been shoved through his sleeves. It kept his arms trapped outstretched. He tried to draw them in, but nothing budged. His legs were tied together to another, upright pole. He struggled to rip himself off this... T-frame he'd been trussed to, but only succeeded in jerking his head forward, and rocking the damn pole, which was somehow embedded in dirt on the floor of his jumper right where the console was supposed to be. Holy shit. The walls of the jumper were distant now, like it had grown ten times its normal size. That or he'd shrunk around ten times. His assailant was nowhere in sight.

John scanned as far as his restraints would allow him. He was surrounded by tall corn stalks.

_Take stock, take stock, take stock! Breathe!_

John checked himself from head to toe, and what he now saw shocked him to his core.

"Aaagghh! Nooo!"

He wore a pair of old jeans ripped at the knees and mud-spattered at the ankles, and a big ol' roughly stitched-on purple and orange polka dot patch near his right thigh - in the shape of a holster. He also wore a tattered and faded red and blue plaid shirt with a green and yellow checkered velcro patch on the rolled-up right sleeve, and a jean vest with endless pockets.

There was something on his head. He looked up through his spiky bangs to glimpse some ratty straw hat. Worse still, there was straw sticking straight out of his sleeves and out of his jeans.

He was a scarecrow.

A clown.

Before he had time to think or even piss himself from the horror of it, the tramp clown waddled towards him brushing corn stalks aside, and twirling his walking stick and humming like he hadn't a care in the world. The tramp sat down in the copilot seat like he owned it, and pointed the stick at him.

"Bang!" he yelled. "Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!" A little white flag popped out the end of the stick with the word 'bang'written on it in bold red lettering. "Oh, and by the way - bang!"

"Whuh? Ow!"

The walking stick was a seven-shooter, and the tramp had just fired seven rounds at his right arm. It burned! John screamed, his eyes squeezed shut. He could feel the acid drizzle, sizzling, down his arm and drip onto his flanks -

_Why?_

He blew at his bicep. Whoa. Wrong move. Tiny sparks then tiny flames flared up, crackled, and as some of the straw turned black, the rest of his world turned black too.

He woke up quivering, and facing the whiteface clown. This one was raging up and down, pummeling its chest. It promptly drew knives from its hair and its pockets and even from its over-sized shoes, which it threw right around him and they all skimmed his skin bar one, which embedded in his shoulder.

He had to ask that same question of this one.

_Wh-Why?_

The whiteface clown threw a glance towards the harlequin and the tramp, who now sat in a boneless squat on the floor like discarded marionettes.

_Why! _

Between them cowered a little gray organ grinder's monkey complete with matching vest and fez.

_Now I understand_.

It was about the boy. They all shrugged.

"Maybe just because," they chorused.

Then the whiteface clown shoved its face into his. Its eyes were neon green with reflective red slits.

"Because it never gets old," it snarled.

The last thing he saw was the Devil himself, a grin upon his pockmarked face. Red suit, horns, tail – the works. He twirled his trident like a martial arts weapon, then went behind his back. John braced himself for the imminent onslaught. The Devil proceeded to knock the stuffing out of him, and his straw fluttered to the floor.

...

John woke up flat out on his front, panting. He could smell sulfur. Flames licked his body. He found he was clutching fistfuls of hay that had been strewn over the floor of a holding pen inside a vast tent. He resisted the urge to cram his stuffing back into what was left of his clothing, but all he wore were his boxers. Not a smart move. He fumbled around his neck, feeling his collar, which was now attached by a chain to a bolted down plate in the floor. John tugged at it a few times, but it refused to budge.

That had been some nightmare. He hated clowns. Yeah, he really hated clowns. Still, it was another memory even if it wasn't one he particularly wanted to dredge up.

He felt lingering imaginary pain – no, scratch that. The pain was real. John sat up, rested his weary bones against the bars, scrubbed his hand across his face, wiped away the sleep from his eyes, and looked around bleary-eyed.

He was accompanied by a... swarm... a bevy... a passel... no, a carload if not shitload of tramp clowns equally restrained and slumped around the holding pen. They were all looking the worse for wear, though none looked quite as crappy as he did. He looked himself over. He was a human being, albeit a wrecked one, though there was still some straw in his hair which he furiously scrubbed out.

There was a clamor just outside the tent. He could hear oinking and squealing. So, auction time then. Seemed it was the pigs' turn. Pinzeys. He'd seen these pig-like critters hereabouts, though they were horned with a furry dinosaur ridge down their backs all the way to a long curlicue tail with a scorpion sting on the end. He knew the tails to be spring-action. These guys had had their tails docked, rendering them defenseless.

He could hear rapid-fire bidding followed by silence, then the whinny of bindies, followed by more bidding. It didn't take a genius to work out what was in store for him and the other slaves. Sobbing clown mothers clutched their bawling children tight. Some male clowns gazed stoically into the distance, others sat in brooding silence, especially the younger ones, who glared their defiance. And there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it. Weird. He never thought he'd consider saving a clown before.

He glanced over at a tramp mother clutching a grubby, wailing newborn, also a tramp, and imagined himself rescuing them both even though he was injured. Impaled. By rebar.

_I never gave up hope because I knew. I knew that you would come for me, John._

"Haliah! Pi Galiari Angka. K'tu?"

The tramp mother tapped her chest, indicating herself.

"Haliah right back atcha," he replied. "Uhm, Pi John." He tapped his own chest, and flashed a grin.

She nodded. Then added with a heavy accent, "I am not a Pinzeysow. I am an Angka. My son, Dulieri, he is not a Pinzeyboar. He is an Angka!"

"I am not a Blerrybuck," he replied, and left it at that as he sank back into his small piece of not so prime real estate. Wow. He'd just communicated with a clown. He'd even just spoken some Clownish by guesswork. Or was that Clownese?

One by one, they were taken out into the open. He was next. He heard Galiari scream, heard baby Dulieri wail as he was ripped from his mother's arms, and sold separately amid cries of anguish from her, and roars of laughter from the buyers. If only he could help Galiari, help her keep her son. He couldn't work out why anyone would need a baby without its mother. M-Michael? Who was Michael? Gah! There was nothing he could do!

John was last. He wondered why they bothered, since he was a mess. He couldn't think what he was fit for other than being a scarecrow. A Joker yanked him up by his chain, and he shuffled out of the holding pen towards the tent flap. He could barely walk on two sprained ankles but at least he could walk, and that was better than being dragged by his wrist chains since his shoulders were so sore. At the entrance to the tent, the Joker shoved him out into dazzling sunlight, and John gasped at the sight.

Mos Eisley. This was Mos Eisley. On market day. He was surrounded by weirdo aliens as well as clowns of every type. Holy crap. Wookiees strutted in gangs, bowling over tiny gray Roswell aliens, and snarling and snapping at just about everyone and everything. Black and white minstrels danced about in troupes jiggling their bowler hats in and twirling batons in their white-gloved hands, singing My Mammy.

The crowds were mixed. It could have been some sci-fi slash circus convention. Or he was still hallucinating. That had to be it. Strange sci fi craft landed and took off, churning up eddies of dust. Whoa.

The Joker ordered a bunch of Wookiees to tether him to a post. A Wookiee wound ropes around each wrist, and threw them up and over a crossbeam about a yard apart, then yanked on the ropes to pull his arms over his head. Then the Wookiee threw the dangling ropes up and over to tie him securely.

_Chewbacca. Ch-Chewie?_

John craned his neck to see the ropes wrap around the beam, performing a loop de loop, and it made his head spin. He wasn't going anywhere. Thankfully his feet were still flat to the ground. He didn't think his shoulders could take much more, and not dislocate. He looked around for Galiari. She was gone.

"We bring this one out last because he is a prize." There was a hint of sarcasm in that voice.

Laughter. They were laughing at him. So, he was the booby prize? Great. His self esteem was already shot to hell, but hey, rub it in, why doncha? But even as a scarecrow, he could be put to good use. John rested his head on his chest, though he glanced over at a nearby mini-copter, coveting it. A circus dwarf glared back at him, then chittered angrily in his general direction like R2D2.

"Look at this one. He is damaged. And he does not appear to be mentally intact. He is only fit for respa bait," said C3PO.

More laughter.

"This one is fit for more than that, and you know it. What am I bid?"

"Fifty drammels."

The Joker belly laughed. Seemed like this was the same old song and dance.

"Come now. I know your tastes. As for his mental health, he took refuge in the mushroom caves."

Even more laughter.

"Show us that he suffers beautifully, and mayhaps I will bid on him," came a gruff voice.

"Allow me to demonstrate."

John whimpered as the Joker ran his hands over his sore back, then jabbed him in his left flank with a feather duster. He grimaced, tried to breathe through the pain, but the Joker held it in place until he let out an earsplitting scream, and writhed in agony. He could feel blood trickling from his wrists and down his arms. He hated rope burns. It didn't stop him from attempting pull-ups in a sorry effort to escape the pain. He wasn't going anywhere any time soon.

"Five hundred drammels."

"Ah, at last," declared the Joker, his grin reaching his ears.

John struggled to even out his breathing. So, seemed there was a bidding war between C3PO and the Cowardly Lion who were both into BDSM. John kept his eyes shut. He knew if he opened them he just knew he'd see Dorothy kitted out in a tight red leather domme outfit and wielding a flogger, clicking her heels together, and declaring there was no place like a dungeon.

"Five thousand drammels," rang an even tinnier voice, though it sounded more like two tinny voices yakking in sync.

A murmur ran through the crowd. There was a new player. Dorothy? Or a eunuch with an artificial voicebox? Or maybe even the Tin Man? He opened his eyes despite himself.

So not Dorothy then. It was a figure in a rustic, homespun grayish cape and cowl. The cape looked oddly familiar, like maybe he'd worn it once, or one like it.

C3PO and Cowardly Lion shook their heads, and both flapped their hands at the Joker, then grinned at each other. Seemed they were okay to wait for some other poor, dirt-cheap bastard to torment like they did all this on a regular basis, like it was some game or challenge. He wondered how long the booby prizes lasted in their kinky clutches.

"Sold."

John was unhitched from the crossbeam, whereupon he dropped unceremoniously to the ground, and lay there in a panting heap. He felt hands on him, and tugging and shoving. Someone even got in a kick. New, thinner rope was wound around his wrist chains, so he couldn't even rub them to relieve some of the discomfort. He had a few minutes respite to gather himself maybe while some more paperwork was being done, and he lay on his sore back staring up at the sky and its erratic alien and looneytunes traffic. Yep, mid-air collisions were in somebody's future.

Oh, great. There goes Dumbo. Caught in chopper blades. It rained elephant meat for several minutes. Oops.

"Walk."

"Yeah, I get it."

John hauled himself upright, and fell in behind the caped figure. He had nowhere else to go after all. Before long, Wookiees and minstrels and clowns and munchkins and oompa loompas and other assorted weirdo movie extras slowly morphed into humans of all shapes and sizes and colors.

So, the hallucinogen was beginning to wear off. Phew! Though their clothing still ran the gamut from caped to fig-leafed. He wondered about the lung cancer/emphysema patient who'd just bought him. Well, with any luck, maybe he'd outlast the bastard, find a way to escape. He'd take the first opportunity.

As luck would have it, they were headed for a busy airfield. Wow. John didn't know what to rest his eyes on first, so he just drank it all in. This place looked like an air show. The aircraft were so varied, from fixed wing to helicopters to jets to drones to... darts? He wondered if he'd been bought for general maintenance of this place, or if he was about to be taken somewhere else, maybe even offworld. Like he wanted to remain on Skojo. He knew now he was a pilot. Had been. This was his chance, his one-shot. Hot-wire a craft, and hightail it outta here.

Yep, his chances of making it home more or less intact here were on the up and up. He vowed to come back some day, and track down Galiari and her kid, clowns or no. They were... people.

John steeled himself, gathered the last of his waning energy, and clubbed the creepy caped alien dude across the back of its head using his tied-together fists. The alien went down and stayed down, and John made a break for the nearest cluster of aircraft, his bare feet pounding the yellow brick road, not daring to look back.

There was no place like home. No, sirree, Bob. Just maybe it was somewhere over the rainbow, though maybe said rainbow was nothing but a sorry. dull spill of engine oil in a rain puddle.

...

"You are heavier than you look, you piece of filth!"

He was being hauled by his wrists up some kind of ramp, that much he could ascertain by a distant tugging sensation and an overall sense of dead-weight heaviness; by his back, flanks and especially his hipbones bumping if not rasping against a metal washboard; the incline, and the odor of engine oil and jet fuel. That's when he realized where he'd gone wrong.

What he should have done was wait until they'd boarded, then made his move. What he should have done was check the alien was out cold. What he should have done was kill the bastard, snap its neck. He wondered what tactical advantage he might now have, given that he was currently blindfolded, trussed and paralyzed after a blast between his shoulder blades from some kind of stunner fired by a seriously pissed alien who apparently now owned him.

_Way to screw up, John!_

He had no control of his body from the neck down. He could only feel pins and needles just about everywhere, and an urge to scratch every part of him from head to toe. He'd slept wrong a few times on that thin mattress Ettifah had given him, and had awoken to find a limb deadened, useless, and itchy as hell. He would shake that limb to allow blood to flow back into it, so the weird sensation was short-lived, and he could go right back to sleep. Unlike now.

John tried to shallow breathe. At least he could breathe. And he was oddly grateful it was a stunner and not a ballistic weapon. A full-body lack of sensation like this after being shot with a bullet would have meant the damage to his spine was most likely permanent, and he'd end up a quadriplegic with a shortened life span.

The seriously pissed alien was shoving his body around like a sack of potatoes - like a scarecrow - grunting the while, manipulating him onto his back then into a seated position against a wall. He could feel a tugging then slicing sensation at his wrists, and his arms fell to his sides, his hands smacking to the floor. He tried to lift them, but couldn't. He felt the same thing at his ankles, and his feet subsequently splayed themselves apart. So no longer trussed then. The alien clearly knew he wasn't much of a threat just now. He willed his limbs to move. Nope. Nothing doing. He was numb from head to toe.

John slowly became more and more aware of how he was positioned. He could feel a gentle breeze on the left side of his face, but nothing yet on the rest of his body bar feeling like he was encased in cotton wool laced with poison ivy. He tried to get his bearings. Exit at nine o'clock. Pissed alien at three o'clock. If he could only move, maybe he could crawl his way outta there.

A tingling sensation began in his extremities. Yep, the feeling was coming back. Pins and needles started up in his ass. So, definitely a hard surface then. He was desperate to wiggle his ass, shift position, but that would give away that he was regaining some control of himself.

The alien was busy fiddling with the ship's control panel, judging by all the clicking and whizzing and endless annoying ringtones. That came from his right. John turned his head towards the light and sound, to try and gain some intel.

It most likely already knew the effects of the stunner, so moving his head wasn't a giveaway. He thought right. A hand grasped his left ear. John startled. The alien jiggled it, making his head wobble, then the alien smacked him across his ear with an open palm, making his head spin and his ears ring. He then turned his head to the other side, and smacked him again the same way, causing his head to jangle on his neck. Ow!

"You will move only when I permit it," it growled in its tinny, bi-tonal voice.

_Great. _

John let his ringing head loll on his chest for a few moments while he gathered himself. It didn't help. He tipped his head back to rest against – a bench. Thankfully the alien let him get away with those moves.

So no sight, no feeling, and now no hearing what with this serious case of tinnitus. He could still smell oil and fuel, and as for taste, he wished he'd had some chewing gum or mouth wash. All he could taste was the dust he'd recently wanted just about everyone to eat. He decided to take... a power nap.

...

"Aaaggghhh!"

This was no longer pins and needles. This was the bends. The stunner had worn off, leaving him in unholy agony.

He was acutely aware of every part of him as he knelt there juddering, his arms pulled out stiffly to the sides. He could no longer rein in the panic, and he breathed heavily, panting and puffing. His left hand! He was going to lose his left hand to a machete. Holy-

"You are not going anywhere, filth. I'm going to give you time to think while I buy myself some provisions. I'll be back."

The alien ripped off his blindfold. The next thing he saw was a club swinging at his left temple. He neither felt nor saw the blow coming at him from the right.

...

It was nearing dark when he woke up again with the headache from Hell. John had been left on his knees for what had to be several hours, but managed to rest his head on his shoulder, and slump to one side. He shuddered in the after throes of the stunner, and residual tingling sensations wracked his body and mind. How was he not slumped over? Then he tried to move his legs. Great. His legs had been braced twice at his ankles and at his knees. Spread apart. He hoped that didn't mean what he thought it meant.

He needed this to end. He'd just been stunned, dragged around, clubbed, and left for what felt like forever in a stress position judging by now localized numbing especially in his groin. He'd been bought by a seriously pissed alien on a planet that still kept slaves, one who clearly already disliked him, and had some kinky plans for him. Yep, he was given time to think all right.

Before that? He'd been whipped, strapped, burned, stabbed, pummeled, waterboarded, hosed down, stretched, electrocuted, and sold. That just about summed it up. He wondered if he'd left anything out. Oh, yeah. Kidnapped. Abandoned. Betrayed. Somehow that hurt more than any physical pain he'd had to endure. John almost wished for the blindfold to be replaced so he could cry into it, bawl his head off. Let go.

Kidnapped?

Whuh?

Wait! That meant... that meant... What? That he was taken not discarded. John chuffed. It was a sorry state of affairs when being kidnapped had a positive ring to it. That and blindfolded.

"Why do you laugh?"

"Whuh?"

"Is this nothing but a joke to you?"

"I don't get it. Look, chief - what do you want?"

"I want you to suffer."

John snorted. Suffer. Yeah. That was so on his bucket list.

The alien threw back its hood, and unclasped its cloak. Whoa. It was definitely female. And how. The long red dress it wore was seriously figure-hugging. It had long straight, platinum blonde hair, pale blue-gray goat eyes, neat bazoomas, and an hourglass figure. Most of that was on the plus side, though he preferred brunettes as a rule.

John's eyes went wide. On the negative side, the female was disgustingly pale and sweaty, its eyebrows were over-plucked and over-drawn, and its were teeth sharp and predatory, reminding him of that vampire dude on the pub sign back in Blerry Bluff. He decided to call her – her? - Vampira. That was pretty much a no-brainer.

Vampira discarded her cape, draping it over the back of the pilot's seat. So, she could fly this thing. Then she thrust out her ample cleavage, and John watched, mesmerized, as her jugs wobbled towards his face. She held her forepaws in front of her like some kind of super-sappy meerkat.

"Not into bestiality," he declared, looking away. Though he glanced back. She was actually kind of hot in a creepy kind of way.

"When we met before, you could not keep your eyes off me," she spat. "Or your hands. I believe the view was... now what word did you use... oh, yes - impressive." She snorted. "Look at me!" she screeched as she tugged his cowlicks to turn his head to face her. Her dangly paws then reconvened around her slim midriff like some Disney bunny rabbit.

Vampira turned into Thumper before his eyes.

"Whoever you are, lady, first off, we never met. Second, I don't remember squat. Zero, zilch, nada. About anything much before or besides... " John nodded sideways. "...here."

John shrugged his shoulders, then he rolled his neck, shook out his arms, and shifted on his knees, though his movement was hindered by the array of braces. He groaned. Truth was, he was beginning to remember, but the memories that resurfaced were either Vaudeville or Disney-ish or flat out nightmarish. Little wonder he suppressed them. If he could just recall a great memory instead, he might fight to regain them all.

"You and your people came to my homeworld under the guise of rescue, then transplanted us all into the clutches of evil."

"My people? My people?" _Please!_

"I see in your eyes that you truly do not remember. In which case, I refuse to enlighten you."

It was a sorry-assed scenario when the bound victim was desperate to press the torturer into revelation. The irony of it made him smirk big time, whereupon she clubbed him on his bare shoulders, then rammed the club into his belly.

"Assassin!"

John writhed on those ropes. One quick glance at his left wrist told him he'd drawn his own blood. At least his hand was still there.

_St-Stay positive, now, Johnny Boy_, he thought right before he passed out, though he thought he heard the Devil cackle up close and personal, and hot, sulfuric breath down his neck.

...

He could feel the raspy breath of the space vampire bimbo-bunny against his left cheek. Who was she? What had he done? She had called him an assassin. That wasn't him. It wasn't him!

"Who... " he croaked, though his head was hung so low, it was doubtful she caught his question. He wished he could wipe away drool from his chin, though he wiped it away from the corner of his mouth against each shoulder. He could also wipe away sweat from his temples onto his shoulders, but not from his forehead.

_Rodney. Rodney! _

"Whom do you ask after?"

_I don't remember who I am... but Rodney would know... He'd tell me._

"You. Who are you? Who were you?"

"You might remember me as a scientist, though perhaps you recall other things about me."

"Such as?"

"My ample breasts! You refused to see me as a person, and only chose to see my... accessories. And vie with another man for my attention like it was some kind of game between the pair of you. I remember it being rather pathetic, especially as my people were in such dire straits at the time, though foolishly I played along at first, played hard to get."

She looked him up and down. He looked her up and down. His eyes rested on said ample breasts. She sneered.

"I am no longer capable of breastfeeding should the happy happenstance arise even after my lifelong barrenness up to and obviously including the eruption on Taranus. Yet if I were given the chance to spawn a child now, it would be a female. And she would become queen!" She shook her head haughtily, and John found himself sadly mesmerized by the rippling movement of her long blond hair. "I shall yet save what is left of my people, of whom there are but few and none of which is human. The one you call Michael has declared it."

"M-Michael?" he whispered hoarsely.

"I am his and he is mine," she hissed.

John nodded slowly.

"The... supervolcano. The caldera. The Aurora-class warship. I remember now. But – we rallied. We saved you all, apart from a handful of... suicidal brain-dead dipshits who thought they could outrun lava."

"Only to thrust the survivors into worse harm's way! Which death is preferable, fast or slow, Colonel. And in case you were unaware, that was a rhetorical question. For now."

_Colonel?_

"Please tell me who I am."

"Only if you serve me well. I demand of you your genetic make-up."

John chortled somewhat. That had to be the worst pick up line he'd ever been fed.

"It ain't happenin', missy." John rolled his eyes. Then he remembered quite how vulnerable he was. He wondered what she was considering doing to him. Maybe a cheek swab? Yeah, right.

"So now that any union might not be on your dominant male terms, you refuse me?!"

"You wanna put it that way... " He let that thought trail off. He didn't care for the way she drew herself to full height, then looked down on him. She ran a forefinger down his cheek then along his lower lip. Uh oh.

"No matter. I bought you. You, too, are mine. To toy with as I please."

She squatted, and shoved her mutated face into his. She ran a long, scratchy fingernail down his cheek, then gouged it along his cheekbone.

"And I please."

She grinned ferally, then launched her furious attack with her razor-sharp talons.

He remembered someone telling him about how she'd managed to keep the faith right up to the eruption, that as long as they could breathe, there was still hope, even though she and...

Ronon!

... others were breathing in toxic gases and scalding ash. The brown-eyed woman who'd beaten him with sticks.

Teyla?

_Dum spiro spero,_ he thought dumbly, as he felt himself being ripped apart. _While I breathe, I hope_.

And he'd hoped and prayed while struggling to find a way into a hangar with a handful of terrified evacuees in tow, salvation at hand.

_Rodney. Rodney!? _

_Do you... copy..._

_Please... _

...

She shredded his flesh. He hung there on those ropes in the middle of some ship, barely able to hear or even see any more. Yep, he could feel all right. That was one sense he hadn't needed right then. She tore into him, clawing at him furiously at first, then sitting back on her haunches, and eyeing him up and down. He could taste, too. Copper. Blood. His own.

She knelt before him almost in supplication, then began taking her time to run those red-painted talons over his skin, scoring him from ear to nose, along his chin to his Adam's apple, then along his collar bones to his nipples. She circumvented those, then scored from his breastbone down to his navel. Worse, she was so close to him he could smell her. He didn't need that sense either. He must have somehow conveyed his disgust at her proximity, because she began to growl.

"You... never hear... of personal space, lady?"

Couldn't he have been bought by a nice, kind sexy slave owner in tight leather and high heels? One who liked to feed him? He'd gone from the nonogenerian Ettifah to the seriously Wraithified... Norena? He almost wished he'd ended up back in Larrin's clutches. At least she was hot. And then there was... Mara. He didn't remember fighting her off. Then again, he wasn't thinking with his brain at the time. Then there was Chaya, and the whole 'glowy sex' without the actual sex.

...

He hung there, stinging from head to toe. He couldn't even lift his head. Blood dripped even from his scalp onto the floor. It poured from his nose, even his ears. Vampira placed something cold and hard against his right earlobe. At that, he rallied, wondering what final indignity she had in store for him, though at least she hadn't violated him below the belt. Yet. He looked at her through his eyelashes - saw her arms shake as she busied herself gathering, what, his blood? He saw her corking several vials once they'd filled to the brim, though he couldn't tell what she did with them after that as everything became a blur. He prayed she wouldn't take any other samples of anything from him, but he was pretty sure he could remain uncooperative in that respect as he hurt too much. Sex was the last thing on his mind, glowy or otherwise. Then she clubbed him once more across the back of his head.

...

Vampira had dumped him. Where, he had no idea. Not that it mattered. He was bleeding out anyways. So here he was. Wherever here was. Abandoned. Again. He had issues with that.

Then it began to pour.

What, not even the weather was going to be kind to him? Still it washed his body, flushing away blood and gore. He lay there flat on his back. Yep, circling the drain. With the faucet on full blast. He was on an autopsy slab and barely alive.

Oh, God, no. No vivisection. No vivisection!

He just wished he could fill in the last piece of the puzzle before he finally checked out. At least that.

His name.

He was... what did Norena call him... a colonel. He was military. A soldier.

So, Colonel John Sh- Sh- Sh-

Shit...

Yeah, Colonel John Shit. Kissing cousin or maybe brother of Jack Shit.

"John." That soft voice was all pervasive.

His eyelids flew open then slammed shut again. He didn't even have the energy to keep them open. Nor could he. The light was too bright, and it hurt his eyes, hurt his entire being. He only saw pink through one eye, so he was pretty sure he had ruptured blood vessels and a detached retina.

So, not dead yet, though he was getting there.

So, there was someone there with him as he lay there dying, and he expected to see an angel, though all he had left him was whatever he could conjure up in his rapidly fading mind's eye, and in his mind's eye, she was beautiful. Who was she? What was she?

"Last... rights?"

"I do not understand your words, John. But you are injured. Allow me heal you."

Hands feathered over his entire body. He wanted to swat her away, whoever or whatever she was, avoid more molestation, any further desecration of his corpse. Why did he still inhabit it? Surely he should have vacated the premises by now. Blown this popsicle stand.

"Go. Away."

"I must not and I will not!"

John cried into the rain.

""M'I naked? Please tell me I'm not naked." Hah. Least of his worries.

"You sport somewhat ragged underclothing," she whispered, then giggled. "Do you not know me?"

He would have shrugged if he could.

"I have grown since we last met. Changed. Even though I ascended, I did not remain a child."

John willed his good eye open. There she was in a floaty dress, all... glowy against a night sky. And plumb grown up. She'd detangled her crazy hair, let it grow out, and it cascaded now in a long, neat, pretty braid over her shoulders all the way to her tiny waist. She even wore make-up.

She performed a merry dance over him.

She played him like an instrument.

John jerked and writhed under her ministrations, yet soon felt himself reacquainting himself with his body. He was no longer on that slab. He could feel damp earth below him, and just about make out some starlit alien sky above him. With two good twenty-thirty vision eyes.

This was no longer Skojo. He'd mapped those constellations in his head whenever he'd snuck outside at night to relieve himself. That and bathe in Ettifah's bathing water barrel or in the neighbor's bindy trough.

"This is the best I can do for you. The others will not permit more. I can get away with only this much because I am still young and not fully formed and therefore not yet fully accountable."

"Your name, princess? Wait - mine?! Tell me!" He pleaded with his eyes. His two good eyes. They embodied what was left of his shredded being.

Why, you are John," she declared with a winning smile, the type that was engagingly caught between being a girl and a woman, more or less grown out of her pre-teen gawkiness with a hint of the promise to come, and he pondered on what it might be like to father and get to raise a daughter, how he'd probably need a shotgun from day one. Yeah, like he'd live that long. Did he already have a son? He had a vision of playing remote control cars, and a happy, chubby baby boy kicking his legs and squealing at his antics from the safety of his mother's arms.

_It was about the boy._

"That much I know," he growled. "I – "

His train of thought was cut off as she looked up and around in fear.

"I have been summoned! I cannot remain! I must abide by the law! My sister reminds me, commands me," she cried, her hands pressed to her cheeks, whereupon she dissolved before his eyes in a eerie glow, and her components shot up into the ether like she was being involuntarily retracted skywards. She reminded him of The Scream elongated as she ascended Jacob's ladder.

Ascended...

"No! Wait!" _Please don't go... Tell me more! I'm... lost!_

He reached for her, reached out for her wonderful, beautiful, incredible, pristine, precious, intact soul -everything his wasn't - but she was gone from him, most likely never to return.

The only human being who had ever healed him rather than hurt him or want something from him was...

"Heddaaa!"

But his scream was ripped away on the whipping winds of an approaching storm.


	11. Chapter 11

A/N - don't you all be expecting too much mercy for our poor whumped Sheppard now. Hedda is pretty much the only person who doesn't do him wrong. With that annoying healing habit of hers, I suspect she just isn't a whumper. Daft bat. Boy, was I miffed when she patched him up in Epiphany just like that. Now that was just plain sick and wrong. Grr. Anyway, apart from that, this is an early post. I'm working on my final chapters, and they aren't the easiest, I can tell ya. I will try and post the next one 2 weeks after this, but no promises. It might be another month. Having said that, I will not leave this fic unfinished, and my aim is to have it complete by the end of this year, max. Reviews, feedback and PMs are encouragement. But you already know that. Anyway - enjoy this bonus chapter. I wonder who the Overlord is... :P

...

John took stock of himself as he lay there in the void; flat on his back, eyes screwed shut, chest heaving, mouth wide open as he greedily gulped down rainwater, replenishing lost body fluids, practically drowning himself in the process, and making gore angels as he flailed in desperation and panic. Some water went down the wrong way, making him gag and choke. He flipped over onto his right side, and barfed most of it up. When his belly finally quit protesting, he calmly slurped in the rainwater instead through slightly parted lips. Then he realized - he didn't hurt so much any more.

_Wait. What gives? _

His cuts and lacerations were gone. He could feel it - whoa! - though his body still tingled from head to toe, and his nerve endings howled in protest at the prolonged abuse they'd endured like they'd held back until now, tearing him a new one in exacting revenge. The tingling sensation settled into a dull ache. He was still hyper-aware of his body, his extremities, though now he felt marginally less reticent to move. He fluttered his eyelids, flexed his fingers, wiggled his toes. He raised a hand. His left. It shook, but at least it was still there. He could feel the comforting weight of it at the end of his arm.

He ran shaky fingers very gingerly indeed over his chest, his arms, his neck, across his belly, across his forehead and down both cheeks, then around both wrists, but all he could feel were his familiar old raised scars; the ones he'd acquired on Skojo, and the ones from before. He didn't bother to check any lower since he didn't have the energy to reach, plus nothing raged at him from below the waistband of his boxers.

So, he was alive. That had to be good enough for now. Or maybe not.

Healed. He'd been healed. Only to be abandoned again. So what now? Maybe he needed to gather his strength, then seek shelter and a source of food. Water, not so much.

He lay there for - as long as it took. He had no sense of the passage of time. He could feel mud beneath him now, oozing all around him. Why had Hedda just left him here to fend for himself?

As the storm finally abated, and his strength returned, and his pain dissipated to a tolerable level, John opened his eyelids to slits, although he dreaded seeing nothing but blackness. But - he could see! He could have cried in relief. He swiped a hand across his eyes, wiping away - mud.

Okay. Okay. Time to move out.

There was a glow to his left.

_Hedda? Teer? Chaya?_

John lifted himself up an inch or so up off the ground on shaky elbows, and craned his neck hopefully. A large round shape entered his peripheral vision, and he jerked his head towards it. It was - a stargate. It, too, was glowy, bathed as it was in the stark light of a full, yellow moon. So, was this the reason she left him there? Believing he could simply haul his sorry ass outta there under his own steam? Get up and walk? Reach the gate in seconds flat? Find his own way home? Fly? He had to remember she was in many ways still a child. John managed a shaky salute skywards.

_Thanks, kid._

So now he had to make it some thirty feet to the gate, and somehow recall gate addresses. Pluck 'em out of his ass. Dial. On the plus side, he'd be staggering or crawling through mud and swampland, not over gravel. And he wouldn't die of dehydration. On the negative side...

_Buck up, John! _

Okay, on the maybe not quite so positive side, it might as well be thirty miles. He might dial himself through to any old where, maybe even through a space gate. Or maybe to somewhere where those space vampires lived. The... Wraith! What other demons might he have to face? He prayed his hands would remember what to do when he reached the... DHD?

He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten anything. A turkey sandwich would come in handy right about now. He was starving, but he decided that was a good sign. He was alive. For what that was worth.

Well, no time like the present, huh. He didn't know what the days were like on this world. The rain wasn't freezing, it was actually pleasantly lukewarm, almost like the tail end of a shower.

A real shower.

With body wash.

Toothpaste.

Shampoo.

Razor blades.

Shaving foam.

Nail clippers.

Dental floss.

Cotton buds.

Fresh towels.

Face cloths.

Antiperspirant deodorant.

Aftershave

Hair product.

Combs.

Okay, the combs maybe not so much.

Apart from the combs, that all sounded so good right about now. That and a decent meal. The bare necessities. He didn't think he was into luxuries much. Dollar store items would do. Even dollar menu fast food to go would be great right about now. Then again, super-sizing sounded pretty great, too. He visualized himself munching a quarter-pounder with a side of curly fries and maybe onion rings, and washing it all down with a large mocha latte. Better still, a twenty-four ounce Bud. He could even snag one of those for a buck plus sales tax if he shopped right.

John's empty belly gurgled with hunger as he turned over onto his left side now, and curled up in the mud, allowing it to smother him. Yeah, he could either pretty much carry on with the whole roll over and die thing he'd begun before Hedda swung by, or take this fresh chance on life.

Pity party over for now, he squirmed a bunch more times in the mud to stretch his muscles, shake out his tingling, aching limbs, pump some blood around his system - prep for his next ordeal - and decided to wend his weary way to the gate, and to whatever lay beyond.

He could do this.

John attempted to stand up only to find his equilibrium had been shot to hell. He'd barely made it onto his knees, pushed up and away from the ground with one muddy hand, when his knees buckled, and he faceplanted. Okay, so crawling to the gate was pretty much his only option.

He... commando-crawled? Yeah, commando-crawled, slowly, stopping every three yards only to rest for ten minutes at a time, maybe even longer, his head resting on his outstretched arms, as his chest heaved with the exertion. He might even have passed out once or twice. He reckoned he had about three weeks to cover thirty feet before he succumbed. His body just wasn't in the mood to co-operate. Maybe he hadn't vacated his corpse after all.

_Feelin' pretty weak, buddy,_ he thought glumly.

Buddy?

Who was Buddy?

Who was his buddy?

Had he dreamed up a buddy?

He had a buddy.

Once.

Way back when.

Yeah, just like he once had a mom and a dad unless he spontaneously generated. He still couldn't visualize that brother. Davy. Davy Jones. Except he was John not Indy. So, something didn't add up.

Gone. They were all gone. He had no-one, not even a volleyball to talk to. Heck, he'd settle for a...a... a... golf ball. Was there even any point in heading to the gate? Would anyone out there even accept him back into some elusive fold? Forgive him for some screw-up he had yet to discern?

John lifted his weary head, and gazed around just as the soft glow of pre-dawn proffered vague, misty, distant shapes of hills. Or were they mountains? He had no way to gauge size. Whatever they were, they flanked him, one hillside or mountainside slipping into darkness as jagged, writhing shadows loomed on the opposite side in the first weak rays of a red giant.

Mist rose about him as ambient moisture burned off. Yep, this was the Valley of the Shadow of Death all right. He could pretty much quit now, allow the sun to cake him in dried mud, desiccate his remains, let the Valley claim him and drag his pathetic lost soul to the very bowels of Hades. Or he could crawl onwards, stave off Death a while longer. Prolong the agony. Which sucked. Ass.

_Decisions, decisions. Live or die. Way to be an A-hole, John. _

And still he crawled - elbow, knee, chin, toes, elbow, knee, chin, toes - and as a light drizzle turned into another downpour, he swam in the blood-red maelstrom. Sometimes he just floated, on his back even, digging in his heels, and kicking.

Splashing.

Swimming.

John thought warmly of his favorite surfboard...

_...a dais up ten or so stone steps..._

...attached to his ankle via a leash, breast-stroking vigorously...

_...crawling slowly..._

...after that perfect wave.

_He'd managed to dial... the DHD..._

He could see a tube!

_Active gate... _

A shining ice-blue tube! It was the one he had been waiting for, watching out for all day through his binoculars...

_...GDO..._

...for that one sweet breaker. He pulled himself up and over onto his stick, and paddled out.

_Crawled some more..._

The shore was in sight.

_The alpha site... _

Then at just the right moment, he leapt onto his board, gripping it with his bare feet, feeling grateful in that instant for his long toes, and he rode that tube like tomorrow could bring it.

_Wormhole..._

Then he lost his balance, tumbled, and washed ashore. Wipeout.

_Crashing into the DHD on the other side... stumbling... falling..._

Endless scowling faces loomed over him as he lay there. They were dark and... silhouettey against a pale pink sky. Why was he surrounded by so many pissy lifeguards? They were totally harshing his buzz, man.

His forearms shot reflexively across his chest as a stunner blast hit him right over his sternum. A second one struck him in the middle of his forehead at point blank range, and his head juddered on his neck as it lifted then smacked back down onto the sand.

_The last stone step..._

As endless pinprick stars reappeared even in broad daylight, winking in and out of his vision, he suspected he hadn't dialed the alpha site after all. Not even the beta site or the gamma site. This site was the omega, though he'd settle for sigma. For some strange reason he thought of pi.

He heard the laughter of a clown, then imagined the tears of one. Like anyone would cry for him.

Lose a scarecrow, lose a... shepherd, just suck it up, and go hire or fetch yourself a new one.

..

"What did you have to stun him for? Now we have to carry him!"

Uh oh. Someone was a tad pissy.

_Keep it down! Trying to curl up and die here. _John turned over onto his left side, drew up his knees, and tucked his head under his right arm.

"Remember me? Well?"

Someone poked his presenting shoulder. John reluctantly opened a single eye, then closed it in an instant, though that was getting old. He craved to open his eyes long enough to see something or someone worth drinking in.

"No," he replied hoarsely, turning his head away. He settled onto his back, and ran his hands over his torso, hoping to grip a blanket to pull up and over himself. He came up with nothing.

Truth was, those pale blue eyes were familiar. Still, that didn't mean the dude was worth remembering. Remembering didn't mean joy or relief ever, it only meant hurt. Yeah, he wanted to remember, prayed to remember, but he wasn't yet sure he could deal. He turned over onto his right side, hell bent on ignoring him, whoever he was.

"Let him be," came a booming voice, which rumbled like... thunder.

"Since when do you make any decisions around here, eh?" The first dude snorted derisively. He sounded irascible. Like, well, lightning, if he had to keep going with his metaphors. Or was that similes? Like he cared.

"Yeah, let me be," John muttered, then rolled his eyes. That movement stung. His head was killing him.

Yep, wallowing in his misery was the order of the day. Hedda had healed his superficial cuts, but he was still nursing chronic wounds that went far deeper than that. Some physical, most mental. She wasn't to know. She was still just a kid after all. On the cusp of womanhood, but still just a kid. He wasn't yet sure if he was grateful or resentful about being partially healed. At least she tried.

"I'm just saying give him a few moments to gather himself, and maybe he can shift himself back to camp so we don't have to," growled Thunder.

"He looks pretty messed up," declared Lightning.

Thunder proceeded to scrape his entire body with a blade, thankfully using the blunt edge. He was covered in... mud?

"Nope, it's all old. Apart from the head injury."

Despite said apparent head injury, someone was jiggling his head by his cowlicks.

"Which leads me back to stunning." John could hear the sarcastic tone in Lightning's voice. "You could have at least waited until he was off the last step. He fell backwards. Hitting his head? Concussion? Hello? Honestly, you are so trigger-happy at times, it's ridiculous. And you might well be exacerbating his injuries waggling his head around like that. Set his head back down gently. Good job."

John felt himself being palpated. Callused palms and fingers ran up and down his entire body, but they were oddly gentle. Whoever it was was being extra careful when feeling the back of his neck.

"Nothing broken. He's just a mass of scars. Not quite the pretty boy any more," declared Lightning with a hint of amusement in his voice.

_Yeah, tell it like it is, why doncha._ Knowing what a mess he was did nothing for his self-esteem. Or give him a will to live. He'd relied on muscle memory to dial off that damn planet since his brain was fried, and he'd screwed up big time.

"He's not walking anytime soon. Is there room on the travois? Well, hop to, and find out."

"Be right back. Brought bandages."

That was quick. Unless he'd passed out at some point. Yep. That'd be it. Someone manipulated his neck. Good thing it wasn't broken. He could feel his head being rotated in one smooth movement as someone wrapped bandages around and around like they'd done it before.

"Do you reckon he'll be of any use to us again?"

Pause. _Great._

"He will fight the good fight." A female voice. John decided to call her Hail.

"Travois loaded? Then we should dump him on top of our other booty, tie him to the poles. On the count of three... "

John felt himself being manhandled and manipulated. He refused to co-operate.

"One, two... three! Lift!"

Thunder, Lightning and Hail lifted him under his armpits, then the backs of his knees then his feet. He could feel himself become heavy, feel his head loll on his shoulders, then snap back. He couldn't control it. He felt discomfort as his older injuries succumbed to gravity, shifting and grating and aching and stabbing, especially his bum leg. How come Hedda hadn't fixed it for him? Then he remembered – she'd run out of time.

She only fixed what she could see.

_She did her best._

They plunked him down on the travois. There was a pause as they all breathed heavily, regathering their spent energy. Lightning complained endlessly about his bad back, but John didn't have the energy to snicker at that. Pairs of hands tied him in place by his wrists and ankles to all four corners of the damn thing. A foam mattress this wasn't. He felt he was being poked in the back by packaging and even bones. He could smell some kind of tart berry commingled with the scent of blood. This was their provisions travois. So that was what he'd been reduced to, huh. Provisions. Livestock. John went boneless, and melted into the other supplies, any residual fight knocked out of him.

He wondered who they were, this Lightning, Thunder and Hail. Then as he felt himself drifting off with the steady rocking movement, and the scraping sounds of the travois poles against gravel, which told him they were underway, though he decided he didn't really care.

Because caring hurt.

They had bandaged his head. Yeah, there was that. Maybe these three cared, though he doubted it. At least one of them was a little rough with him after all. He thought there might have been another threesome in his life once, and he'd thought they cared, too, like he'd cared about them. He would have given his life for any one of them, do anything for them. He'd... loved them, and they'd betrayed him. They had been his team, and they'd tortured him without remorse. Without mercy.

When he thought about it, Hedda really should have left well enough alone. He'd been given an out, and had been denied it by her meddling. John allowed tears to soak into the loose end of the bandage, which had draped itself across his eyes, the mud gluing it in place. No-one would ever know. Or care.

Who could possibly care about a moldering, ratty, useless scarecrow missing half its stuffing, and with a brain made of old clock workings?

He could hear the cawing of crows, feel the steady thwap of their wings close his body, and hear the Devil cackling at him up close and personal amidst the stench of sulfur. They were all mocking him. His could feel his cheeks flush deeply in his sorrow and shame. He knew then too that he was growing sick again.

...

They kept poking him awake, shining a bright light in his eyes, which practically had him jack-knifing off his sickbed, then letting him fall asleep again. What was with that? Couldn't they just let him be? He opened his eyes to slits from time to time. He was in a tent. Great. The circus freaks had reclaimed him.

John turned over, ignoring everyone and everything, and let his depression wash over him in waves. He didn't want to see anything, hear anything, smell anything, taste anything or feel anything ever again. Four senses lost out of five wasn't bad. It irked him that he could still hear.

"You are wasting my valuable time. Now - get up." Lightning.

The man sounded exasperated, like he'd ordered him to get up many times before. Well, they'd just have to drag him up now, he was that spent.

"We could use your help. Your expertise," came a soft female voice. Hail. She was trying to coax him up.

Use him?

"How would you like to go on a mission?"

John's eyes flew open, and all his senses came back in a heady rush. He hauled himself upright, though it hurt him, then he slumped sideways. As he groped for bed rails to steady himself, someone blurred and fuzzy around the edges wadded up a fur wrap, effectively turning it into a pillow, then shoved it near his left elbow, and he melted into it.

"Me?" he croaked. "Exp- " he launched into a bout of coughing. The same someone handed him a canteen. The blue-eyed man. John grabbed it with both hands, and swigged, spilling most of it all over himself. He looked for signs of anger in the man, but saw only pity, which in some ways was way worse.

When he realized he wasn't in for a beating for being clumsy, or for wasting water, or for speaking out of turn, he carried on where he'd left off. "Expertise? Mission? We met before?"

"You really don't remember us?"

John merely snorted. The blue-eyed man scanned his face. John scanned the other man's face in turn. The man looked at him knowingly.

"You received a nasty blow to the head, thanks to You-Know-Who... " The man thumbed sideways. Thunder. "He likes to shoot things, and doesn't always think before he fires off a round, much to my eternal chagrin."

The trigger-happy Thunder merely grunted.

"Who?"

The blue-eyed man looked at him knowingly.

"Who am I? More to the point, who are you?"

"You said you know me."

"I'm asking you if you know who you are."

"John. My name is... " _dammit!_ "Just John."

The blue-eyed man paused, then eyed him strangely.

"You know, Just John, I do believe that is all you can tell me. It'll do for now. Then all I shall tell you is my name is... True Torrell. This is Brave Andon. And this is Fair Marin. We brought you back to camp. Welcome - back! - to our humble abode. And I remember you as a just man, and a fearsome warrior. It is a fitting title. Always was."

John scanned them earnestly.

"You... my team?"

"Yes, Just John. We are your team."

Answers. He was about to get some answers. At last. John sighed, let out a choking sound, then closed his eyes, squeezing out a final tear. He scrubbed a hand across his face, and left his arm covering his eyes. He thought he heard the three of them yelling at him in turn to pull himself together, get up, and fight the good fight alongside them. Yeah, he could do that. He just needed a moment. He visualized his team. Torrell, Andon, and Marin. But the looming shadows they cast on the blood-red tent canvas were of another threesome.

Before he could work out what that meant, his team vanished, and their mismatched shadows disintegrated then dissipated like scattered seeds. A murder of crows pecked away at those seeds, as he hung there, useless, desperate to ward them off – hell, fight them off - and save his team; save them all.

Other crows approached. They were larger, and more murderous. Carrion crows with glowing red eyes. They pecked at his straw until nothing was left of him but his skeleton of twigs and branches, whereupon the Devil appeared before him again, hefted his trident, broke both branches in his lower right leg with one swipe, then skewered his tattered bundle of a heart, ripping it out of his woven wicker rib cage along with his burning, oil-soaked, corn husk lungs.

...

"Breathe, dammit!"

"We're losing him!"

"We cannot afford to lose him. He is a worthy prize!"

So not the booby prize this time. John struggled to surface above the flames, but first he'd have to duct tape his body back together, and regather his charred straw. Burning! He was burning!

...

"Awaken at last, our Just John!"

"Whuh?"

John could hear the clatter of flatware, which made his stomach rumble.

How very Pavlovian. Whuh? Who had said that? Thoughts of someone eating off a tray at his bedside came to mind. The infirmary. Yep, food beckoned. He opened one eye.

And there they were. His team. They squatted nearby, busily cleaning... weapons? The infirmary this wasn't. This was a tent. An all-purpose tent. He could still smell food. He could also smell unwashed bodies. He even heard snoring. It was all strangely reassuring.

"Here. Take some broth. I will help you. Do you remember me?"

Some petite woman waved a spoon in his face. Heck, his dignity was already all shot to hell long ago, so he opened his mouth for her, whereupon she smiled. She drizzled in a mouthful, and he swallowed. It tasted beyond wonderful.

"M-Marin. I... remember you. At least I think I do."

He studied her as she spoon-fed him while he eagerly fed like a baby bird until the bowl was scraped clean. Her hair was long, wild, and matted. He remembered her with short, sleek, perfectly styled hair secured at the nape of her neck, showcasing her pretty face. He also remembered her immaculate, impractical, tight-fitting dress which left almost nothing to the imagination. Now she wore scruffy but unrestrictive leather looking every inch the fantasy warrior. So did the others, of which there were twenty or so.

They were all men apart from Marin, and were all busying themselves either cleaning or honing weapons. By the time John had counted them all, his head was spinning. He let his head sink back into his pillow, clenched his eyes shut, then felt a vague tugging around his neck as he fought to open his eyes even against the sirens of healing sleep.

...

When he woke up again, he knew he seriously needed to pee. He wondered if he'd pissed himself while he was out of it. Judging by the smell in the tent, he might well have soiled himself.

"I think I... think I... need to... "

...

He was clean. Images of infirmary sponge baths came to mind. He pushed himself upright using his elbows.

"Someone... bathe me?"

"Nope, though we had several female volunteers, and one male." The man frowned at a redheaded dude, who flashed a cheesy grin, and waggled his eyebrows suggestively at John. He shrugged, and shook his head in response. He didn't swing that way. Though he wondered why anyone, male or female, would rush to volunteer to wash his grubby, scarred, damaged, sweat-ridden body. That kind of thing had to be a chore.

"We hauled your miserable carcass on a travois down to the river, and let the running water do the job. Whoever's camping downriver is in for a shock. Hopefully it's the Overlord's foul minions and not other humans, and that you carry both dysentery and parasites," said Andon, his green eyes sparkling with humor. "At least I hope it was downriver and not up." He frowned again. "Anyway, the cold water cooled your post-injury fever, too. Torrell's bright idea. Your swill did double duty. Go away, Grimmell!"

Grimmell. The ginger... dude. Oh, boy.

"Our Andon has a poor sense of direction. He once mis-fired a weapon of yours, and destroyed one of our shacks. He didn't realize which end was the business end. We usually only allow him knives. Or forks. Grimmell, you have been warned. Quit staring at him. Now leave! Go... gather firewood or something."

John heard a chuckle in... Torrell's voice. Yeah, Torrell's.

"Weapon of mine?"

"Not of yours personally, but of – Never mind."

"I... don't remember."

"Remember, we're a team."

"I... still don't remember."

...

"Fight. The. Good. Fight!" Clap clap clap.

"We. Are. A. Team!" Clap clap clap.

"Brave Andon, Fair Marin, True Torrell and Just John!" Clap clap!

"I don't... "

"Remember? Eh?"

_Believe you..._

But after they told him many a tale of bravery, fairness, truth and justice, he did.

...

John's team nursed him back to health, taking it in turns to sit with him until he could finally lift himself off his sickbed. He reveled in the comfort they proffered him, though before long if not too soon he brushed them off, swiping their hands away, and knocking washcloths and bowls onto the dirt floor. They let him get away with it. Yep, he was growing ansty. John pulled himself up, and asked where he could take a shower. They all pointed to the river.

They filled him in on what had gone on while he was out of it. They told him how he'd been concussed during a skirmish with the Overlord's foul minions about a month ago, and had gotten sick from the open wound on the back of his head, most likely from the muddy swamp he'd collapsed in. They'd put a neck brace on him for good measure, they said. John's hand flew up to his neck, and he felt a raised welt there. He remembered something pressing on his Adam's apple, chafing it, and now it was gone.

No more neck brace.

Now he was well, they said, they intended to work towards infiltrating the castle come the fall, and rescue a handful of their fellow Olesians from the Overlord, after which they would skip to another world, and hopefully set up a permanent home, build up the remnants of their Wraith-culled people from scratch. John nodded. Made sense.

...

John ached all over, but it was a good kind of ache. He was getting fit again. He was useful. He sharpened knives, gathered firewood from the surrounding forest, water from the river. He wrangled giant, bucking bronco turkeys, then helped pluck them. Well, they were kinda like turkeys, only with elongated, ridable bodies with twelve legs. No-one complained about that, since pretty much anyone who wanted got a drumstick. John found himself carving the meat, stuffing it between two slices of bread, and downing it in three bites, eliciting stares.

"It's called a sandwich," he declared with a grin. Random memories like that drove him nuts.

When Torrell carved strips of some dark snake meat one night around the cooking fire, John muttered, "He himself, he, the Grinch, carved the roast beast." They stared. "Okay, scratch that," he muttered, fumbling his fingers in the air in dismissal, then he sank his head into his arms. Something was wrong, but he didn't know what it was. He somehow knew they wouldn't get the reference. Heck, he didn't even get it himself. Had they lost so much of their culture while on the run? He asked Marin later on when it was their turn on night watch, and she just patted his arm, then went over to talk to Torrell. About him. After that, the snake was called roast beast, but John knew something was amiss. He just didn't know what it was, apart from his poor memory.

He struggled to reacquaint himself with Olesian customs and habits, but nothing was sinking in or even sounding familiar. The loss was a side-effect of his injury, they told him. He'd remember someday. He wondered when. Soon, they said. Every now and then, Andon slapped him on the back, and apologized.

"For what?"

"I... "

"Stuff happens," he'd reply in earnest, cutting him short.

Andon needed to get over whatever part he played in his injury. John couldn't remember what happened, so Andon needed to drop it. John wasn't about to hold a grudge for an honest mistake, especially since all this had taken place months ago now. He rubbed the back of his head. His hair was growing out in a funny direction right where he'd been hit, but that was just one more crazy cowlick added to the collection. He briefly wondered whether he had suffered other head injuries in the past especially on the crown of his head, or had been born this way. Chances were he'd taken too many blows. That'd screw with anyone's memory.

...

It was time. John donned scruffy black leather, selecting leggings, a tunic, a belt and a pair of knee-high boots someone else had worn in, all from the communal pile of clothing. Thankfully the boots had been sanitized, and only smelled leathery rather than cheesy. He also swung a baldric over his shoulder complete with sword, and slid on two leather wrist guards, in which he duly tucked several knives. That reminded him of someone. Andon? Yeah, Andon. Who else could it be? John frowned.

"M-Mad... Max," he muttered, as he put on a pair of night goggles.

"Mad Who?" Biln.

"Never mind."

Still, he felt more than a little, well, steam punk just then.

He kept hold of his boxers even though they were becoming more and more threadbare. He'd learned to sew just a little, as the tunic he'd selected needed patching up. It was enough to be able to darn his boxers in two patches where his ass cheeks had worn them down, and sew up a seam which had come apart at the crotch. He couldn't do much about the waistband, where the elastic was poking through, but until the things fell apart on him, he'd wear them. He would rinse them out in the river – downriver, of course - and hang them on a branch to dry, while he perched on a log in vigil with a cloth around his waist, trying to avoid eye contact with Grimmell as they both whittled sticks into spears in preparation for the upcoming battle. The good fight. At last. They had prepped for this for nearly a year now. They were tough, and fighting fit.

His boxers became an endless source of amusement. Yeah, it was some idiosyncrasy of his, but for some reason, he wasn't prepared to give them up. They all teased him mercilessly around the camp fire, but it was all in good fun, he decided. Mixell suggested he'd had a special blankie as a baby in the same design. Pahn suggested they were a token of a particularly memorable tryst even though he couldn't remember anything which set everyone in fits of laughter. Torrell said it was most likely women's clothing he'd torn off a washing line offworld along with a frock, whereupon Grimmell said something lewd about the strange 'women' he must have encountered there since there was a slit in the front and not below, then eyed him up hopefully. Marin told them all to leave him alone. Yeah, his continued severe memory loss was another source of ribbing alongside his scars, his ears and his cowlicks. Times were he didn't even dare take off his boots in case they discovered he had a rolling pinkie toe on his right foot. John chuckled, enjoying the ribald camaraderie, then he gathered himself, and looked up shyly.

"Cut it out, guys," he ground out in mock seriousness as they donned their leather armor around twilight, though he finally threw them one of his cocky half smiles. Something was out of kilter, but he didn't have time to dwell. Something was bothering him, but it'd have to keep. For now. He could address it after the good fight, now known as The Good Fight with air quotes. It would go down in history. John only hoped he would remember, though he seemed to be getting better at recalling. He remembered almost everything after his accident, but before that was pretty much a blur.

...

Winter was looming, and they needed to be out of here before the snow flew. They'd already endured one harsh winter here, not that John could remember anything before the accident, which had taken place during their first abortive incursion, right at the start of spring. They were at their lowest ebb, but had expected to win since they were on the side of right. They weren't about to make the same mistake again. They used the summer to lick their wounds, get fit, gather supplies, and were set to rescue their own now that it was fall, and the first vicious bite of their second winter was in the air both morning and evening. Mid-day was still pleasantly warm.

So this was it. They were about to rescue five fellow Olesians who'd been captured the moment they'd set foot on this world around a year ago. All women. Apparently the Overlord liked to abduct beautiful women from all over the galaxy. Sindon said that the Overlord was a fat, ugly, slimy bastard who couldn't get women unless he drugged them into compliance, and how he sometimes even liked having them all at once. Sindon had seen one sorry orgy on a spying mission. He'd been close enough at one point to make the kill shot, but at least seven women had been writhing all over the Overlord at the time, and his own incapacity had wrenched his heart asunder.

"He has my sister, Jerin," he said to John quietly one evening, his eyes full of pain.

John couldn't remember Jerin. So what else was new? But he flashed an empathetic look all the same. It didn't matter if he knew someone personally. Kidnapping, enslavement, rape – it was all wrong. Wrongs that needed to be righted.

"We'll get her back. And free the others," he declared, as he steeled himself for The Good Fight.

The only female around was Marin, though she was Torrell's woman. Grimmell was still after him, but he finally managed to set him straight. Well, not exactly straight. John told Grimmell he preferred brunettes, whereupon Grimmell backed off.

The only real problem now was the Overlord's foul minions. John hadn't seen one yet despite scouting for a sighting of one, but from the description, they were ugly bastards, too. They were bald, heavy-set, gray-skinned, and had glowing red eyes. And apparently they were vicious fighters.

FMs. Foul minions. They were the ones with the really cool stunners. That was all they really knew. Seemed they weren't quite human, although the Overlord himself was, according to Sindon's intel. John wondered why they were in league with him, and he with them.

...

The sun rose, and began to burn off the pre-dawn mist. John yawned, snuffled and stretched, kicked off his blanket, and sprang up. Their band soon gathered around the doused campfire, ate and drank in companionable silence, then set off at a pace, him with barely a limp now. They ran though the day, rested briefly during a moonlit night, taking it in turns to guard their small band, and ran again, practically until twilight of the next day. When he saw the castle for the first time as they reached the edge of the forest, John gasped, and started to hyperventilate. He braced himself against the nearest tree. Those gleaming, geometrical spires took his breath away...

The next thing he knew, he was staring up at the sky, and had the strangest feeling he was falling into it. Whoa. John spread his arms out to steady himself, keeping a death grip on tufts of grass. He could feel a stark brace around his chest akin to the one that had once encompassed his neck, and he raised a shaking hand to scrub it away from his sternum to his navel, feeling the slickness of endless sweat, then his free hand gripped the tufts once more in case he went on a tailspin, pulling too many Gs as he spiraled out of control. His F-302 had been hit. His Black Hawk was down. He was crash-landing behind enemy lines! He couldn't eject!

"Aagghh!"

Marin was dabbing his forehead with a wet cloth, stroking his bangs away from his face. She managed to ground him, pretty much literally. But... Gs? He didn't need to be grounded! He needed to fly!

"Whuh?"

"He needs to know the truth!" she cried.

"The truth can keep until after the rescue," said Torrell flatly.

"What truth?" John whispered hoarsely in between puffing.

"He can't handle the truth," Torrell said to Marin. "Look what it just did to him."

"Try me," growled John, as he scanned the sky for a black hawk.

"After the rescue. I give you my word."

"Look." John rolled his head, and winced. " I don't know why I fai- passed out just now, but – does it have something to do with that... castle?"

"Yes. It does."

"Torrell!" yelled Marin. "John... " She shook her head, and looked away.

John frowned.

"Well, since that's where we're headed, maybe it'll all come back to me. Was that where I was wounded?"

"It is," declared Torrell.

"So what you're saying is... the circumstances of my head injury is a little more shady than I've been led to believe. I'm thinking Andon didn't have my six. He keeps apologizing to me." John rolled his eyes.

"Six? Yeah, something like that."

"Andon and I are good. Like I said to him, stuff happens." John sat upright, shrugged, then stood up, fighting against falling over again. "So, we stick to the plan. Get everyone out, then hightail it to the ancestral ring. Per plan," John nodded, and jabbed his right hand emphatically at each member of his team in turn, "I'll take point on the way to the castle, and watch everyone's six on the way to the ring." He could see the concern in all their faces. Seems they were worried he would pass out again. He wasn't going to let that happen.

"Guys?" Whoa. It felt good to have someone give a damn. He shrugged away their attention, at the same time basking in it. _I'm good_, he thought. _They care,_ he thought. "Anyway, I'm okay now. So how about we get the party started?" John staggered, swayed slightly, then rallied with a sigh, and started lumbering then striding towards the castle. He was soon joined by the others, who either flanked him or fell in behind. It had felt great to be going on a mission. At long last. They were well armed even against those freaky alien stunners, and every last man – and one woman - was fighting fit. They'd all worked hard for this. Failure was not an option. He still felt a little weird, but he hid it as best he could, and walked tall and straight.

Andon walked off to one side in what John perceived to be a sulk. Andon was armed with endless knives and a really cool stunner, which he'd wrested off a so-called foul minion. The rest of them had ballistic weapons including makeshift mini-cannons, bows, arrows, slingshots, and spears. John caught up with him, hoping to draw him back in. Something was clearly bothering Andon. Heck, something was bothering John.

_The stunners fire green and not blue or red! Why?_

"Hey, buddy? Just make sure you fire that thing in the right direction, huh?" John slapped him on the back. Andon looked sheepish. Times were Andon couldn't look John in the eye. John trudged on. He guessed Andon just needed to work things out for himself. John had hoped he'd have understood by now that he wasn't one to hold a grudge.

Behind him, he could hear Torrell and Marin arguing in stage whispers.

"Criminal! Murderer! When this is over, I'm – "

"That's rich, coming from the mouth of a woman arrested for treason!"

"I was a good citizen, _True_ Torrell!"

"No, you were a good little girl who wanted to hang out with the big bad boys. I know your type, _Fair_ Marin."

Marin merely growled. Then she came up to John, and rested a hand on his forearm. He thought she might have had tears in her eyes. Yep, that had been some row. He felt real bad for her, though he held back from holding her.

"I'm sorry, John, but you are living a lie, and have done so for the better part of a year," she whispered before falling back in with her man. John gasped.

As much as he wanted to know the truth about a mission that went south so that it wouldn't go down like that again, it really didn't matter that much. He was with his team, which was about as great as it could get, and yeah, all was well with the universe. He had a fair idea of what happened. He could read between the lines. It was pretty clear by now that Andon had typically fired the stunner in the wrong direction, John had been hit, landed in a mud puddle or bog or swamp or what-have-you, and had struck the back of his head on a rock or a pile of rubble. Some bacterium or other had gotten into his system, and he'd developed a life-threatening fever along the lines of pneumonia. John couldn't blame Andon, and he wished the guy would just talk to him, finally get it off his chest. Maybe asap before the rescue so he'd know where he stood. As if on cue, Andon paused, waited for John to catch up with him, and handed the stunner over.

"You don't have to do this, buddy."

"Yeah, I do."

John grinned.

"Cool!"

He'd... always wanted one of those? He spun it in his forefinger a few times, then tucked it into his belt. This was the best. Life couldn't be better.

John took point as planned. He would take six on the way to the ring, and make sure everyone got through before going through himself. He scarfed down some turkipede jerky and a roast beast sandwich, washed it down with a swig of water from his canteen, and pulled out his stunner – his stunner! - twirling it once more before hefting it into defense mode as they neared the perimeter of the castle.

John ogled his new toy. It glinted in the moonlight. He found himself wishing he had another one just like it so he could fire with both hands.

He remembered something. That when it came to weapons, he was ambidextrous. Wow. Which brought him right back to cool.

...

They met with little resistance. Turned out a third of the FMs were coincidentally engaged in another skirmish to the north where there was a human stronghold, if the sound of gunfire and the occasional rocket flare were anything to go by, and they themselves stumbled upon another third. It was creepy. The FMs were suspended in metallic industrial chic pods, hooked up to overhead power packs leading to a jack on their heads, looking for all the world like they'd been switched off, and were recharging, their eyes open and unseeing. Weird.

John didn't hesitate. He took them all out, his stunner set to kill. He wasn't about to take prisoners who might leap up and bite them on the ass, in this case, literally, given their dentition. They reminded him of those Wraith.

They finally found the stolen women in one vast room in one of the turrets, many cuddling or entertaining children and babies who looked like they'd never seen the sun, though they all looked clean and cared for if not pampered. The door just opened upon approach. He wondered why the women hadn't just snuck out.

There was abundant food lying around, plenty of toys for the kids, some jewelry scattered here and there, and the room smelled of expensive perfume. There was ample, lush bedding, what looked to be an entertainment center, and when he checked an en suite – endless baths with towels and scented candles and oils. Still, none wanted to remain in the lap of luxury, it seemed, since they burst from the room as one. Several snatched up jewelry on the way, placing it on the run around their necks and wrists, or shoving it in pockets.

John led them all down and out of the turret via transporters that revealed themselves to him. Weird. He had to shush the agitated women from time to time, and in doing so, he noticed they were all wearing bikini tops and harem pants. The pale, wispy-haired, platinum-blonde children were either dressed in light blue silky overalls for boys or light pink silky jumpers for girls. One even wore a sissy tiara. That kid, a chunky, sly-looking, brown-eyed boy of around three with a thatch of spiky red hair was the only one with any color, though he was still somewhat sallow. John put it all down to lack of sunshine and vitamins.

He shot up a few more FM guards here and there, but one got away, which really pissed him off. Not that it mattered. John picked up another stunner, and fired using both hands. Seemed the Overlord himself had gone into hiding, maybe in some secret chamber, since there was neither hide nor hair of him. They really looked everywhere, checking behind bookshelves, even dialing clocks like they were combination locks. That suited John just fine. He didn't have time to worry. They had to get themselves to the gate. Still, the weird thing was the way just about every door to any chambers just opened for them – no, him! - at will, making this mission easy. Except of course for supposed secret chambers, which never revealed themselves to him.

Whoa.

There was no use of... C4? – he'd have to ask Torrell about that memory - or cracking passwords, or... switching door crystals. He'd have to ask Torrell about those memories, too. He wanted regular doors to open, and they did. It didn't seem to work that way for any of the others, and before long, they yelled his name from time to time to bring him to yet another door. When they found the treasury, all hell broke loose, and half their number tipped up provisions from their packs in favor of plunder.

He was beginning to think there was something special about this castle, or maybe there was something special about him. No-one else, it seemed, had this ability. John could rest assured that Torrell would tell him more about those whys and wherefores once they had all gone safely through the ancestral ring. They would all unwind around a camp fire, toasting their own good fortune, reunited at last; the last remnants of their people. From there they could pick up the pieces, and compose even more merry songs of bravery, truth, fairness and justice. John couldn't sing to save his life, but that hadn't ever prevented him from joining in.

He wouldn't be the one dialing same as Andon wouldn't be the one firing. They each had their strong suits. Torrell was a great leader, and Marin did a fine job of keeping all her menfolk in check. John was great at – magically opening doors, it seemed, and shooting two stunners simultaneously. Mixell, Sindon and Pahn were good at following orders. Grimmell told a fine tale around the camp fire. Rildon was a great folk singer. Dorn wasn't a bad hunter. Andon? Well, he was just Andon. Who sometimes even threw knives in the wrong direction. Then there was Fannell, Biln, and a few others whose names eluded him, who stood their ground in a fight. One of their number was a great cook, and could toss together a decent meal with whatever came to hand, though he sometimes went out to forage for herbs, disappearing for hours on end, only to come back with a bay leaf. Now who was it? John wasn't good at remembering things yet. Soon. They said. Soon. But when? It had been a year!

They only had two casualties. Nothing serious. Just one stunning, and one knife wound. Biln had a knife lodged in a gap between his armor, which Andon pulled out without warning, and tucked it into a boot, leaving Biln staggering, his face fixed in a silent scream. Hemmell had been hit in the arm by an incendiary FM stunner blast, which rendered the limb useless for a time, to say the least. John had ordered Pahn to pat out the flames. Not too much harm done, though some suspected Andon had found another stunner, and had fired wrong as usual. John found himself wondering about Biln's knife wound, too. Unless the FMs had suddenly become very adept at throwing knives, then Andon was the usual suspect.

Now they had the five Olesian women back in one piece, which was beyond great. They also rescued over a dozen more women of every very exposed skin color imaginable, and they were all pretty much runway models.

The Overlord had taken seven of these women all at once?

John shook his head. He could daydream later. It was mostly the supermodels who had babies and small children in tow. A stunning redhead was dragging the oldest boy rather than carrying him, and the kid used his other hand to keep his sissy tiara in place as he wobbled on his short, fat little legs in an effort to keep up. Yep, that kid looked heavy. Little wonder his mother didn't carry him. She couldn't lift him.

None of the Olesian women looked remotely pregnant. Okay, bar Zorin, unless she'd merely eaten well. Sindon was running with a woman who thankfully was flat in the belly, though that probably didn't mean much, since women didn't 'show' in the early stages of pregnancy, or so he believed. So that was Jerin then. Jerin whispered to Sindon, who nodded slowly, then grinned broadly. He guessed what the exchange was about. John heaved a sigh of relief for his good buddy, and for Jerin herself, whom he'd have to get to know, or reacquaint himself with since he couldn't remember her at all.

John stayed on six, scanning his stunner for any sign of being followed. There were probably half a dozen FMs on their tail, but that wasn't bad odds. Torrell, who was on point, doubled back to him, and rested a hand on his shoulder.

"So, to my mind we should keep these non-Olesian women and their children, and rebuild our own people. What say you, Just John?"

"Reckon we should try to find their homeworlds, help them rediscover their culture and heritage, reunite them with their loved ones, people who care. That kind of thing."

John turned to see Torrell's expression cloud over.

"I guess to bottom line it, we should ask them first, not decide for them," John added with a shrug.

"I see," said Torrell, who eyed him knowingly, then turned on his heel, and dashed up the stone steps to the dais. He dialed, and the ring billowed towards them in a shimmering blue light, then settled into a rippling pool of water that looked just like blue bubble mix on a blower. Marin, Andon and Grimmell urged everyone through. John gasped when a pale toddler with peach fuzz on its otherwise bald head gazed back at him in curiosity from the safety of his mother's hip. It had glowing red eyes. The kid snarled at him, and John saw that its tiny milk teeth were shark-like rather than even. What with the grayish skin tone...

Crap!

John dashed up the steps. They were all in danger! Torrell blocked him, standing four-square. What gives?

"You had to go and spoil it all, didn't you. Go all noble on me. Well, _we_ Olesians are keeping the women and children, and you, you dumb, stupid, trusting Atlantian, can rot here. You've served your purpose. Farewell, _Just_ John."

"Whuh? No, wait! There's something you need to know!" he pleaded.

_The AU Daedalus!_

Before John could react, Torrell punched him in the gut, and as he doubled over, he shoved him down the stone steps. John tumbled head over heels, trying to roll rather than fall, and screamed as his bum leg snapped in two places. As he lay there, groaning and panting, graying out from the agony of yet another broken leg, he saw Torrell's smug expression, Marin's air of regret, Grimmell's mien of lost opportunity, and Andon's look of relief. Then they disappeared from sight just as the bubble popped.

So this was it. John was no longer of any use. The lower branches of his leg had snapped again. He lay there all alone, splayed upside down on the stone steps, staring skywards, awaiting the carrion crows.

He felt then heard the rhythmic pounding of hooves, and rumbling, alien battle cries - both on the approach. Riders. He couldn't take any more, the pain from his broken leg was overwhelming, but the pain in his tattered heart and his wrecked soul was all encompassing. He willed himself to dissolve, to dissipate, to evaporate, to scatter, to melt; to die. It was not to be.

He realized as he stared, eyes stinging, open-mouthed, at the ancestral ring, which morphed back and forth between a giant monocle and a pair of eyeglasses in his blurry, double vision, that he hadn't even saved his small band of Olesian refugees from themselves. Not then, and not now. They were doomed. He'd failed them once more. He had failed himself, his team, and now he'd probably even failed humankind.

He was nothing more than a scarecrow in winter after all, drifting on his cross in the bleak, starless void between galaxies.

John cried out to the universe, but all he heard in response was mindless static.


	12. Chapter 12

A/N – sorry it's taken me so long. Like I said, these final chapters are complete, total, absolute, utter, utter – or is that udder - cows, and I have to say RL is one, too. Not that that is ever an excuse to start a fic and not finish it. I hate that. Been stung myself. *hisses and glares at at least two Shep whumpy fan fic writers* If you happen to swing by, you know who you are! Okay, this chapter is really dark, but never fear, our boy pulls through. I just have to bring him low, low, low, low... XD

...

"Strip it."

John startled.

"That would kill it. The Overlord would be most displeased if we were to kill it. He might withold his talents. He must not withold his talents. We must replenish our stock once more. We must also splint the leg of the thing so it doesn't die of shock."

So now he was 'it', huh? Figured. But – those voices! They were beyond gruff or hoarse from smoking. They were non-human. Feral. Apart from that – yeah, splint the leg. Splint the leg!

Someone or something huge and powerful hoisted him by his shoulders the rest of the way down the steps, banging and scraping the small of his back in the process where his tunic rode up. He somehow knew he could never keep a shirt tucked in or down in place. He felt grateful for his leather clothing, and prayed the first whateveritwas backed down on the stripping thing.

He felt himself being laid out on a softly yielding surface. By the smell of it, it was grass. He scraped his fingers either side of him, and came up with a fistful of the stuff including its roots, and the tingly feel of dirt working its way under his fingernails, lodging there. Not much of a weapon unless the gray critter-dude had life-threatening hay fever and no epipen to hand.

Epipen. He imagined himself wielding a lemon at the tramp clown, and watching it cringe, wilt, choke, and disintegrate. He felt unimaginable hatred towards it. The tramp clown had once been his friend. He had betrayed him, as had the whiteface clown and the harlequin.

John couldn't even summon up the wherewithal to open his eyes. He wasn't sure he even wanted to. That decision was made for him as an FM roughly manipulated his broken leg. John's eyes flew open, and he gasped in pain. He clawed at the grass and dirt, his upper body jack-knifing up off the ground. He knee-jerked, but only one leg responded. The other one sent shock waves of an all too familiar raw agony through his hip right along his spine up through the back of his head, and right down to his feet to his toes. John screamed, and grayed out.

When his whirling vision and skew equilibrium recalibrated itself, he fumbled around him, and found a half-buried rock under his right hand. He gouged it out in one swift maneuver – okay, three fumbling, seriously unco-ordinated maneuvers - and swung it in a right uppercut at the nearest FM, only to have his wrist grabbed mid-strike. The thing leapt on top of him, and straddled him across his hips -

_Hell, no!_

-and grabbed his other wrist, pulling his arms above him as it skittered nimbly over his head despite its bulk like it was a quarterback in training and John merely a traffic cone in an obstacle course. He could hear the thud of hooves backing up to him, and a mount – perhaps even a... bindy – no, a horse - whinnying in protest at being forced in an unnatural direction. Backwards. Then after his wrists were tied, he could feel tugging on his arms as the other end of the rope was tied to – oh, surely not the horse! Holy shit. He knew what was coming. He'd seen enough Westerns as a kid.

"Don't do this," he wheezed.

He was going to be dragged by horses. He prayed they wouldn't strip him, and this time not out of modesty. Without protection, he would end up pretty much shredded.

"At least remove its vest and tunic. It must be punished."

_No, it really mustn't. _

"The O-Overlord will be... p-pissy if I d-don't arrive... in one piece," he ground out. He looked at the four – no, five - FMs in turn, hoping at least to see some comprehension in their glowing red eyes. He reckoned he wasn't about to see compassion in them any time soon.

"Listen up. You d-don't have... to do this."

"It pleads!"

The FMs launched into a kind of staccato gurgle like a whole mess of bad plumbing after a flush, which John took as laughter. Then one stuck its face close to his, tilting its head this way and that as if in study of a rat stuck on a glue trap. It stunk like blocked drains. Yep, bad plumbing all right.

"Yes, we do. Have... to 'duh-do' this," it replied, mocking his stammer with an accompanying exaggerated head roll. "You and your ilk slaughtered all of us bar those of us you see here. We numbered one hundred and fifty at the outset, then fifty, and we are now reduced to a mere five. Five! You stole our females and our precious spawn. For that you must pay."

John squirmed as the FM slammed its hand on his chest. It wanted to subdue him. Not feed on him! Not that!

"They weren't... your females, they were ours._ Are_ ours. Y'know, scratch that – they belong to themselves. As for your... sp-spawn, that wasn't my d-doing. And neither was... the tangle you got yourselves in. The females – their mothers - claimed them as their own. They... didn't leave them behind. Ow!"

Two FMs began working on his leg as promised. Or threatened. They sliced his pants leg from ankle to knee. John could see the odd angle of his leg mid-shin and the severe discoloration there. This was going to hurt.

"Aaaggghhh!" John writhed, and gouged his other heel into the dirt. He needed to scrabble away. This was torture not discomfort.

He could also feel his arms starting to go numb. Maybe that was a good thing. He tossed his head back to see the upside-down ass end of a horse, yeah, horse, and prayed the damn thing didn't decide to dump on him. His blood started to coat the rope around his wrists, then slowly trickled down towards him. Okay, maybe not such a good thing. He raised a shaky head, and glanced down the length of his body to see his legs being manipulated outwards, leaving his assets vulnerable.

They wouldn't.

They couldn't.

"Rope."

So not rape then.

"There is no more rope."

"Then we strip it after all." There was some glee in that rumbling voice.

John felt his baldric being unbuckled and removed, then felt the buttons pop on his leather vest as they sliced it open. He hoped they'd allow him his undershirt, but no, they sliced that off, too, and pulled it all out from beneath him, scraping the small of his back on the baldric buckle in the process. He reckoned that minor injury and potentially being shit on would soon become the least of his worries.

One of the FMs shifted and shuffled around him only to place the baldric between his teeth. A scuffle ensued, and the caring, humanitarian FM fought with the nasty-assed one over whether or not they should let him bite his tongue clean through or chew his own lips off or not when they straightened his broken leg without anesthesia. Thankfully the halfway decent one won out. He found he could only tell them apart by their voices and their attitude. He looked for tattoos or scarification or emblems. Anything to distinguish them; anything to distract him.

John screamed and writhed and gouged the dirt and bit into the leather as they brought his leg back into alignment with a jiggle and a tug or three. Humanitarian, his ass. He must have fain- passed out for a short while because the next time he looked down, his right leg from knee to ankle was mummified in bandages made out of torn-off strips of his tunic, his cut-up vest was wrapped around the bandages like a spiral of orange or apple peel, the splints were now in place on top of both tunic and vest remnants, and the baldric had been wound around his leg and tied off both ends with the leather laces drawn from his tunic.

He could feel blood flow back into his leg, and he knew at least one of them had done a good job. He didn't know whether to be pissed or grateful that at least his leg was protected for the ordeal to come, but what of his bare torso? His one bare foot? Yep, they'd removed just one of his boots for some crazy reason. Just maybe his swathed, broken, booted leg could hop home in one piece, and somehow regenerate the rest of him since the original him was about to head south.

Still, since his upper body was pretty much a mass of keloid scars, maybe those would afford some protection against any rough terrain. Thankfully it was mostly grass, though those rocks weren't exactly throw pillows, and neither could the rubble nearer the castle be called a feng shui arrangement of comfy chairs and strategically placed candles.

At least his pants remained in place. The shock of having his groin grated or worn away might easily have killed him. His back, however, had been steadily growing number and number over the months, what with the build up of scar tissue, and could probably tolerate yet another battering. His back was... pretty much tough as leather. And just as inflexible. Jeez.

John turned to the halfway decent FM, hoping to engage him. "At least tell me who you are. Why you are doing this."

The thing straddled him again, scanned him up close like he wanted to rip his face off, and purred in his ear. It rained spittle, and John struggled not to look or act disgusted.

"We are the Khaurgh. The Khaurgh!" it growled.

"Sorry, chief. Never... heard of you."

"Then I shall enlighten you, human, on behalf of all Khaurgh. We left home on the Ghirium many decades ago. It was meant to be merely a short scouting trip, the forerunner of a mission to search for females who were not barren, and we left our own long-barren females behind in order to neither torment them nor shame them with our prospective bounty. We then numbered one hundred and fifty dedicated warriors."

_Dedicated? Doncha mean horny?_ he mused. Then he mentally slapped himself. What would he do if his own kind was in jeopardy? Though times were he didn't give a damn about those prissy Ancients he was constantly paying the price for with his own existence. Yeah, he was beginning to remember, all right, and he thought he might prefer to forget in this instance. Memory sucked when it was selective, and even when it wasn't.

The Khaurgh sat back on its haunches as if squatting to tell its fun tale around a cozy campfire with a whole mess of s'mores to roast.

"Our mission had barely started when we somehow left our own galaxy through an anomaly in space," it began, "our curiosity getting the better of us when we detected an omicron ray signature that needed to be investigated, and we found ourselves drifting from solar system to solar system in this miserable galaxy in an endeavor to find our way home to our beloved Andromeda."

The... alien paused, and looked John in the eye as if wondering whether he had the capacity to comprehend. John nodded. He was curious now, plus it took his mind off the throbbing in his leg.

"Some of us prayed to the Ancestors for the salvation of our kind, others sought more pragmatic and practical solutions, such as saving ourselves. We have a saying on Khaurgheewaukh. Trust in the Ancestors, but do not forget to douse the camp fire."

John chuffed. He remembered a similar saying from his tour of duty in Afghanistan. Trust in Allah, but do not forget to tie up your camel. He got it then as he got it now. John nodded once more. Maybe the gray critter-dude realized he all-out empathized, for he continued.

"Eventually the Ancestors heard our cries. That or we got lucky. Our legends had it that there was a lost city of the Ancients by the same name as our galaxy, so we spent many years in search of it. It was, at first, an exercise in futility. We hoped to discover a means to return home, or find a way to remain and thrive, grow in number, and prosper. We also needed sustenance, and we became celibate, first to conserve energy, and then to protect our seed from cross-contamination. We lost many of our number on those early missions, and when we were down to merely fifty, we serendipitously came across an open-minded human that was not only prepared to help us locate the lost city, promising it would peruse on our behalf, but it made a clever suggestion that we recruit suitable human females so that we might replenish our dwindling gene pool - that or perish, lose our culture, our very existence as the Khaurgh. All it wished in return was our stock of diamonds and platinum," the FM flicked a meaty paw in a dismissive gesture, "the right of the first night, and that he might represent us in public, act as our ruler so that there would be no suspicion directed towards our remaining warriors, whereupon we masked our true selves, and fell in beside it."

John guessed that diamonds and platinum was junk that abounded in... Corgi Walk. Wherever the hell that was. Oh, yeah. Andromeda.

"'M listening."

"You care? You... give one of your damns?" The gray critter-dude scanned his face as if he were trying to read him, then shrugged. "No matter. The human offered to test the merchandise for fertility. He explained your ways to us. That you merely select your females from the market place, check their anatomical parts for signifiers of fertility, something to do with the color and condition of the nipples of which there a subtleties of hue and texture only human eyes or human fingers can discern, then mount them as the final proof, and that you do not court them as we do. We give them tokens such as purchased bouquets, trinkets, sweetmeats in decorative, beribboned boxes, demonstrate our prowess in mock battle – that kind of thing. He has been our conduit into human behavior ever since. I have to tell you it disgusted us then and still disgusts us to this day, but it was a means to an end. We attempted being pleasant to your females, courting them singly by tweaking their nipples upon approach, unlike the Overlord, who often takes – took! - up to seven at a time for the Testing."

John smirked despite his pain.

"Your Overlord has been snowing you, chief. We also... 'court' our females, and they court us. It's a two-way street. And we do not go around... checking each other's anatomical parts or perusing or, uhm, tweaking nipples or anything else as you put it until we both choose the time and place, and even then it's more a matter of – "

"Both? As in only two? This is out of kilter with the Overlord's description of your mating behavior, that your males test multiple females in one mating session. Anyway, enough! The Overlord managed to find us very many females that he deemed fertile, though they are nowhere near as beautiful as our own. It was an arrangement that suited us."

"Who is this Overlord?"

"He is our eyes, ears and voice in this steaming cesspool of a galaxy that has rejected us! Fought us! Hated us! And with his research and assistance, we managed to locate the lost city of Andromeda, affording us a base, a home from home; a sanctuary. We merely seek a means to return to our own galaxy. Yet if we are doomed never to return home, then at least we have a legacy here in this city, on this planet, the chance of a future, some semblance of hope. Then you came along."

_Stronghold..._

"And if we were ever to return, we would take our progeny to replenish our stock, instigate a breeding program to bring our descendants closer to our original purity. But you stole them from us! And for that you will pay."

_Progeny..._

"One of the Stolen was my firstborn son! This is for Mhaalh!" cried the first Borg – no, Khaurgh – his eyes glowing a deeper red, whereupon he leapt onto his mount, and slapped it on its rump with a riding crop. John braced himself for the ordeal to come.

...

The scarecrow watched from the sidelines. The human was stalling. He could tell by the way its breath hitched, the way it furiously scanned its surroundings for an out even though it had a badly broken branch, the way it kept the dull one talking. The odds were stacked against it, but the scarecrow could see its mind ticking over, the wheels and cogs whirring and grinding in its shattered brain housing. It was trying to engender sympathy, and gain some... intel. It did, of course, but that would be useless unless it survived.

The scarecrow watched the posse of five ride off at a gallop, dragging their human behind it. He watched it being battered against rocks and stones and twigs. The human's lower left branch remained encased in layers of fabric, and although the leather of its pants began to wear down in patches, the human's torso began to bruise and bleed more and more with every painful-looking full-body slam as it flapped like a flag in a category five hurricane.

The human looked panicked. It went red in the face, its neck muscles and arm muscles cording as it tried to compensate for the rough terrain by spinning and twisting and shifting itself away from never ending obstacles. Before long, it seemed to lose steam, lose the fight to somehow remain in charge of its harsh punishment. Wilt. It was clearly spent. It looked pale and sweaty, as if it might be going into shock. He watched it huff and puff and purse its now blue lips. He watched it alternate between clenching its eyes shut and opening them wide enough to look manic; no doubt part of its body had just hit something hard or sharp. Its eyes glazed over, and closed. Its head hung limp on its neck, and rattled freely, in danger of snapping like kindling.

The dull ones' mounts jumped over a fallen tree, one after the other, but they must have forgotten about their captive, since it smacked into a fallen branch, and no amount of tugging would loosen it. The one rider dragging it gave up, steered its mount around, but the beast kept going, turning around and around, no doubt confused over its sudden lack of direction. The rider dismounted wearily as if its captive was being troublesome, and hooked the reins of its mount over a low branch of a nearby tree.

The rest of the posse came to a halt. The two scouts out front returned, and both dismounted. They released the unconscious human from its bonds, and carried the now limp body to the mount of the one who had dragged it. One of them mumbled something to the rider about how it was just going to have to put up with the human's messy leaks, since it was the one who instigated this punishment without the Overlord's authorization, but that one assumed a look of disgust on its face.

The scarecrow watched as the form was first tugged along then draped over the mount. One rider threaded the rope already around its wrists over the back and under the chest of the mount, then wrapped the rope around the human's good leg, tying it off around its bare ankle. Its splinted leg stuck out sideways, and chopped the air as the posse trotted the rest of the way to the castle. They traveled a little slower now since as they had nothing with which to properly strap the human in place.

The human's body soon became slick with its own blood. The dull rider that was reluctantly in charge of it was struggling to keep hold of it, its gray knuckles in a death grip on the waistband of the human's pants. Lubricated now from head to toe in gore, the human slid under the beast, and dangled there between its forelegs, jabbed by the beast's elbows and buffeted by the movement of the creature's now unsteady gait.

They reached the castle and its drawbridge when gravity, poor knotting, and lack of attention finally caused the human to slither off the mount only to be dragged across the wooden boards on its back then front then flanks, held in place by one wrist. Its other arm twisted up and around, first this way, and then that, whereupon it, too, bent at several odd angles as it caught more than once between hoof and wood.

The beast tried stepping over its erstwhile burden, reared in panic at the tangle between its legs, then with an angry nicker it kicked the human with its hind ones. The human rolled, and drop off the drawbridge into the moat before the riders could dismount in time to stop it or even catch the rope. The rider who'd dragged the human grinned ferally. He chose not to dismount, but smugly watched the other four fumble for purchase at the water's edge. One shucked off the bulk of its metallic-looking uniform, and dived in.

The scarecrow shrugged on his cross. It wasn't worth caring, because caring hurt. Though he chose not to laugh.

...

_Shark!_

John flailed in panic as the creature bore down on him, its gray skin glinting in a slime green underwater half-light.

_Poke it in the eyes! _he thought. So he did. He had one good arm after all. His right. His left arm drifted like seaweed. Someone had seen fit to weigh his right leg down.

Down...

The creature grabbed him by his cowlicks, and pointed upwards. That wasn't what he expected. He expected it to down him in one gulp along with the frogs and the pollywogs. He thought the water might be going from dark to light, but once the creature let go of his head, it sank onto his chest, and he could only see dark, swirling, churned-up pond scum, and stones and bones and pots and pans and skulls half buried in the silt.

...

The scarecrow watched the dull one break the surface with the limp human in its clutches, then haul it up and over the drawbridge with the help of three others of its ilk. The creature shook the human, banged its back, and even kicked it in its ribs and kneecaps, whereupon the human gagged, and belched up stagnant water. There was some pondweed caught in its hair, silent witness to its dunking as it sputtered out the last of the mire. The scarecrow could see sickness in its future, but that didn't really concern him. He was too distant for that. But for some reason he kept a close watch. A strangled cry arose in his throat as he watched the creatures slam the half-dead human onto an inbound wagon full of bulging sacks and a crate or three rather than sling it back on a horse, but he managed to suppress any further cry of outrage as the portcullis clunked shut.

...

John awoke to a multiverse of pain. There was no way to call how he felt merely a world of one. He'd just been... waterboarded? Again? Somehow he knew that was getting old. He realized he was wheezing, and that he was burning up. So, not just water being poured down his throat through a wet cloth, but dirty water then, resulting in yet another fever. His chest felt constricted, and his right leg and left arm were tingling and itching and killing him at the same. He thought he might be in traction given that his limbs were all raised and held in place, but then again, there was no need to restrict all his limbs, now, was there.

He was in restraints. But where? He wasn't in... the infirmary! John listened for something familiar, like the beep of machinery, and reached out for the faint, welcoming hum coming from the very walls, thrumming along conduits, comforting him, easing the ache in his bones, but all he heard was the sly clanking of jaded, geriatric plumbing. He looked about him, and saw once magnificent, old stone walls patched up here and there by breeze blocks. Seemed no-one had bothered to plaster them over, make the place look a tad homey. It felt cold, and echoed with old ghosts. He might just have to reach out and activate...

_No!_

Okay, so he was in some castle. Why? His throat was sore, his head was pounding, and his ass was numb. Heck, when would someone ever give a damn about him? Something? Even a dog? John looked down to see his faithful boxers. Yep, that pretty much summed it up. They were all he had left in the world, though they looked as bad off as he felt. Seemed they didn't bother cleaning him up either. He was grimy, sweaty and filthy, and all tore up, as were his boxers. Made him wonder what was with the casts on his arm and leg. Then again, they were in the same state as him. He remembered casts being white, sometimes neon pink, not green and slimy-looking with patches of black mold. Casts were meant to be there to help healing, to be scribbled and scrawled on with well wishes and F-bombs and dirty pictures and other embarrassing stuff you'd never ever want your mom to see not in a milion years. Not that he had one, so he guessed it didn't matter. Which brought him back to his boxers. They were all he had in the world.

He reached down with his good hand to make sure they were in place. They weren't. John panicked. Then he found them. They'd slid further down to his thighs. Either he was getting thinner, or the waistband was beginning to lose its elasticity. He rearranged them around his nuts and yanked the waistband back above his crotch, since they couldn't reasonably fall while he was horizontal. It was almost as if someone had been rummaging there while he was out of it. Thankfully, he had no memory of that. Still, his boxers protecting his dignity was the worst of his worries. He was sick, restrained, and now broken. He was a captive with very little memory of his former life. So he wasn't an Olesian after all, he was – what was it Torrell had called him? – oh, yeah - a dumb, stupid, trusting Atlantian. Whatever that meant. He hoped it meant something good.

Right now all he knew was life totally sucked ass. And what were his chances now of recovering anything? His health? Fitness? Ideal weight? Memories? Libido? Friendship? Camaraderie? Life? Liberty? The pursuit of happiness? Love? Care? Hope? All of these things eluded him. With one hand freer than the other – it being on a longer chain and all - John wiped his eyes with the heel of his good hand. He allowed his head to sink back into his thin mattress. The Ritz this wasn't, but neither was it a bona fide infirmary bed or even a homeless shelter. It was a dungeon, pure and simple. He couldn't imagine why there was even this perfunctory attempt at healing him. He was of no use, just like that ratty-looking scarecrow he could see from time to time, floating there in his peripheral view when there weren't even any crows flapping out of the stonework.

...

The scarecrow watched the human work its way through a myriad emotions and bodily functions. Good thing he didn't care, or he might burn and writhe and gasp and wheeze and flail and sob and dream and cuss and drink and sweat and puke and yell and shiver and beg and cringe and scream and piss and moan and shit and ache and shake and hurt and hope and despair and hallucinate and thrash and headbang right along with it. Still he waited with it as the weeks trudged by, and witnessed its struggle with its poor health, ruined body, wrecked psyche and bleak soul. Not that it mattered to him. It was just a means to pass the time while he sought his own oblivion. He just wished the human had been given painkillers alongside those antibiotics, and a shot or five of pain killer when they came to stitch up the gashes on its meatsack or slather ointment on its bedsores. He noted how the human was long done with eating and praying.

...

John's brain swilled around in his skull, and he didn't fit his skin. Someone had replaced his bones with ash. At least that's how he felt when they finally took the casts off, and released him from his lopsided restraints. They ripped him off his sickbed, and dragged him under his armpits down several hallways.

John found himself fascinated by all the paneling as he stared up and around. It was pretty. All copper and teal, with huge rivets. He'd seen nothing but drab gray, green and brown day in and day out for months on end. Now there was color, and his deprived eyes drank it in as if it were neon orange and a brilliant sky blue. He forgot to keep track of whether they took him left or right or even went around in circles to confuse him. As for the brilliant sky blue, he better sear that in his memory. He suspected his destination wouldn't hold much color.

John wished he could fly as he reached out a hand to touch. He drew his hand back in quick. He knew he mustn't touch the walls. He didn't know why, but he just knew.

Then they shoved him into a pitch black space. Instinctively, he put his hands out, and slowed his forward momentum as best he could, hoping he wasn't near the edge of a precipice, about to plunge into oblivion. He staggered and fumbled, his priority right now being not to fall down a hole or over the side of a cliff.

"Hey!' he cried hoarsely, and the reverberation confirmed it. He was in a room, a sparse one at that. The feel of cold concrete against his bare feet corroborated the fact, then his knees and palms attested to it. He could vaguely make out several rectangular shapes as he looked up and around like a dog. As his night vision started to kick in, he could identify a cot and a table. Before long, he spied a chair and a bench either side of the table. Scanning the otherwise bare room, the only other shape he could make out was a large rectangular window frame. He dragged himself to it, and scrabbled his way up the wall. No handle. No surprise there. He staggered over to the window, and peered out onto – darkness. No stars, no moons, no streetlights. Nothing. Just a strange hum and an eerie darklight glow at its edges. Weird. And he was back to just gray. He'd have to think himself into a midwinter landscape of texture rather than color. He banged his fist on that window. He vowed to break it some day.

With no sense of day or night, he decided to rely on his body clock, which was essentially to give in to his body's demands. Pee o'clock, poop o'clock. Sleep o'clock. O dark barfy. He was still sore all over. He was also exhausted. John crawled over to the cot, felt for a mattress and maybe even a sheet or blanket. He reached for the bed frame, hauled himself up on shaking arms, lifted up first one leg, then the other, and eventually managed to clamber in.

A klaxon blared. Stark neon lighting pervaded the room, vanquishing all shadows.

"Get off the cot!" A synthesized, low octave voice zinged around the room.

_Make me_, he thought. He was about to drift off. Nothing could keep him from sleep. Nothing. He was too damn tired. Sick and tired.

The klaxon was relentless. At first, John tried to block it out, but it would stop for some ten minutes to half an hour, giving him time to sink into a swirl of random pre-dream thoughts, when the damn thing started up again. The light was intense, but doable on its own. Heck, he'd slept in stranger lighting, snatching himself a power nap against the occasional olive tree under the relentless desert sun and to familiar sounds of warfare, but nothing back then – back when? - compared to this. He almost longed for those familiar sounds. Of bullets flying, of bombs dropping, of goats bleating, of men ranting, of women screaming, of children crying, of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer from the minaret five times a day. At least he understood them. They had an odd yet familiar schedule to them, a pattern he could discern, a certain rhythm or cadence however foreign. This seemed to wait until he was drifting off. What, was this cot fitted with some kind of sensor? He sat upright, and slowly allowed his eyes to adjust to the stark light, then checked about him for a spy hole. What gives? This was his first day out of their sorry excuse for an infirmary, and he reckoned he deserved a break. They needed to cut him a break!

Then it dawned on him.

The window.

Two-way mirror.

No question.

John sighed, and rolled his head. He needed to pick his battles. He rolled off the cot, grabbed the blanket as an afterthought, and huddled in a corner. He'd been bedridden long enough in any case. The movement exacerbated his poorly-healed injuries, and he felt his bones stuck out more than usual these days, but once asleep, chances were he wouldn't feel anything, until the nightmares began.

"Next time, ask permission. Goodnight. John. Pleasant dreams."

At least whoever or whatever it was didn't call him Johnny Boy, though why that stung him so bad he didn't know. Heck, he'd been called a slave and also 'it'. So why should some variation of his actual name bother him so much?

John felt his eyelids droop, but he panicked about sleeping, and startled himself awake several times. The next thing he knew, a klaxon blared, and Andromeda screamed in his ear. John screamed back.

...

The scarecrow watched the human struggling to find a comfortable position to sleep in. It made him squirm on his cross. He didn't want to empathize with it, but he couldn't help himself however much he fought to look away. The human looked beaten in body, but there was a glimmer of defiance in its half-lidded eyes, a certain endurance, a resilience; a physical reflection of the immutability of the soul. Sure, it looked more gaunt, angular and wan than ever before, its hair dull and dark and flat in contrast to its paling skin, a perfect depiction of chiaroscuro, a yin yang.

Not long ago, the human had been toned and fit, cosseted and fattened up and strangely loved even beyond its own expectation or norm, and it had blossomed, turned a rich mahogany, its hair bleached with copper streaks by its endless days toiling under a fierce sun. Its eyes back then were bright and sparkling, full of the defiance that might have been and might yet be its salvation. It had regained a vibrancy, a usefulness and a purpose it had thought it had lost. It had meant something to someone, though that someone beat him, that someone was no better than... no better than...

Team. Wraith. Family. Replicators. Colleagues. Hybrids. Nemeses. Owners. Hallucinations. Ancients. Torturers. Clowns.

The scarecrow conceded without emotion that it was easier to be made of straw than of flesh and blood. That way, there was no expectation above and beyond. There was no yearning for salvation when you were a scarecrow. A scarecrow was seasonal. A scarecrow simply was. It wasn't about feelings and emotions. There was no reason to trust, no reason to believe, to hope. To love.

Hope was a creature forged in the furnaces of Hell. Love was a creature forged in the oases of Heaven. The scarecrow had no part in this eternal pull, wanted no part in cosmic puppetry. It did what it had to do. A scarecrow scared crows, pure and simple.

But what was a scarecrow's task in winter when the crows had flown?

Then a strange thought occurred to him:

_I am him and he is me..._

And whoever it was who had captured them knew together they were John.

...


End file.
